I think I have solved the problem of how best to elect a BH Presidency in a fair non-ethnic way. Walking the dawg through the mud of Oxfordshire has its uses.

Two Options (Note – based on what might be acceptable to the main parties).

Option One: Ethnicity Lite

The basic Dayton formula is kept (ie a three-person Presidency, with one Presidency member from the Republika Srpska entity, two from the Federation entity).

In each entity every voter has one vote, to be given to any named candidate who has to compete under one of the following pre-defined categories applicable in both entities:

  • Bosniac
  • Serb
  • Croat
  • Bosnians
  • Others

Any candidate can compete under any heading – if a Serb or Bosnian or Jew or Other thinks that s/he can best represent Croat or Bosniac interests, let him/her run for that category.

In the Federation no more than one person from any one category can go into the Presidency.

The candidate with the highest number of votes wins in Republika Srpska. Two candidates with the highest number of votes chosen in two separate categories win in the Federation.

This arrangement allows people in either Entity to vote for a candidate of any ethnicity. Fair. 

In practice it is likely that a Serb will be elected in RS and a Bosniac and a Croat in the Federation. It is possible that the runner-up on the Bosniac slate would get more votes than the winner of the Croat slate, but not get elected. That can be defended as echoing ‘weighted voting’ as happens in the EU as between large and smaller countries, where smaller countries get disproportionately more voting weight.

Option Two: Non-Ethnicity

The basic Dayton formula is kept (ie a three-person Presidency, with one Presidency member from the Republika Srpska entity, two from the Federation entity).

In each entity every voter has one vote, to be given to any named candidate who has to compete under categories chosen by the public.

Thus any new category can be chosen if enough signatures are gathered to launch one (the threshhold of signatures being set higher or lower as required).

Hence voters could choose not only ethnic categories but also non-ethnic categories (Libertarian, Beer-Lovers, Social Democrats, Serb, Patriots, SDA or whatever).

The categories list as finally agreed would be the same in both Entities, encouraging pan-Bosnian campaigning.

But as before every voter would have only one vote.

In RS the candidate winning the most votes would win.

In the Federation as in Option One: the candidate with the highest number of votes would get in, as would the candidate with the highest number of votes in a different category.

This would open the way to all sorts of new outcomes. In the Federation a Bosniac would be sure to win one place. A Croat might or might not win the second slot, but could win eg by campaigning as a Social Democrat or a Bosnian rather than as a Croat.

Option Two enables voting on issues rather than ethnicity, and is notably fairer to all voters (giving everyone more choices), but it does reduce the chances of a Croat definitely being elected to the Presidency either as a Croat or at all. Hence it is unlikely to be acceptable to the Croats.

So, Option One it is (unless even the theoretical possibility that a Croat will not get elected is enough to compel the Croats to block the change, as it might well be)

In which case there is no choice but to have Option Three, a four-person Presidency elected in both Entities from the following ethnic categories, with the candidate with the most votes in each category winning:

  • Bosniac
  • Croat
  • Serb
  • Others/Bosnians 

Since all BH Presidency decisions are by consensus, the extra person does not affect voting outcomes.

But where would that candidate be elected? Maybe in each Entity there would be a Bosnian/Other list and the candidate winning the highest number of votes in one or other Entity would be chosen, ie the Bosnian/Other Presidency member probably (but not necessarily) would come from the Federation. Republika Srpska might not care about that?

Or it just spirals off into endless wrangling, as it is next to impossible to come up with any formula which does not involve one or other ethnic community having to cede ground on what it sees as an existential issue of principle.

My latest RFE/RL article:

… the former Yugoslavia could end up stranded on the steep sand-dune of history, unable to climb upwards to the green grass of full EU membership or move sideways to a better place without slipping far back down the slope.