Electoral Geography of Bosnia and Herzegovina – is there anything beyond the ethnic rule?

Abstract

ABSTRACT The majority of experts consider ethnicisation the defining factor in Bosnia and Herzegovina’s political life. Our objective is to uncover what other factors affect party performance and what, if any, territorial pattern different from the ethnic one, can be drawn. We argue, based on quantitative analyses, that besides the “ethnic rule”, other social cleavages (like the urban-rural one) with territorial patterns are also present in the country, though they are less significant. In the the entity of Federation ethnic polarisation is a significant contextual factor, while in the party competition of the entity of Republic of Srpska mainly non-ethnic factors are decisive.