BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA AND FEDERALISM
Keywords:
Constitution, Unique State, Federalism, Confederalism, State, Bosnia and Herzegovina, General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and HerzegovinaAbstract
Federation is a form of a state composed of a voluntarily united already existing states into this form. This unison has as its objective an implementation of specific goals shared by all members of the Federation. Usually these goals are the matters of defense, economy, commerce, finances, diplomacy and alike. All member states have their own constitutions and certain competencies which have not been transferred onto the common state, that is the federation. From the mid 10th century till the Ottoman conquest in 1463 Bosnia and Herzegovina was a united, independent, feudal state governed only by a monarch and feudalists. After it had been conquered by the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy in 1878, Bosnia and Herzegovina was shaped into a very unique form of state (corpus separatus within the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy),but still continued to exist as united. It had retained the same characteristics during its having been both the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenians and the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Bosnia and Herzegovina has always been only unitary state with no elements of federalism.
However, during the war against Bosnia and Herzegovina (1992-1995) the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina was formed in the territory not occupied by the Yugoslav national army forces meaning the so-called Republika Srpska part. Also, even after the war, the whole of Bosnia and Herzegovina has been treated as a federal state in some documents.
Accordingly, the Venice Commission stated in 2005. that Bosnia and Herzegovina is to be treated as the Federation of two entities: Republika Srpska and the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Recently, both domicile and foreign expertise public, have begun to reconsider the notion of Bosnian and Herzegovina being truly the federation at present or should it only become such in the future. The objective of this paper is to establish a true nature of the inner political state form (vertical organization of authorities) of the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
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