Search

There are two social democratic parties in Bosnia Herzegovina: SNSD and SDP BiH. These two parties differ regarding their origin and their political activity in Bosnia Herzegovina. Thus, it was assumed that voters of the two parties differ regarding their national composition, socio-demographic characteristics and political attitudes. In May of 2007 a face to face interview was conducted with 260 voters of SNSD and 147 voters of SDP BiH. SNSD?s voters were found to be less tolerant, less liberal and more prone to nationalism and the feeling of ethical superiority relative to voters of SDP BiH. As a matter of fact, SNSD?s voters were more similar to voters of some nationalistic political parties like SDS then to voters of SDP BiH. The observed differences between political attitudes of SNSD and SDP BiH voters was explained by increasing ethnic tensions in Bosnia Herzegovina in Spring of 2007 and by their essential dissimilarity: SNSD?s primary objective is Republika Srpska and its survival, while SDP BiH insist on unity of Bosnia Herzegovina.

This paper provides a critical analyzes of 2012 local elections in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Since 1995 the local elections and its political and electoral system have been based on the Dayton Peace Agreement (DPA). According to DPA Bosnia-Herzegovina has the multiparty system and regular and free elections. These local elections were held amidst continuously renewed political turmoil at the cantonal, entity and state levels. 2012 local elections results have shown that the HDZ and SDA continued to dominate politics at the local level in the Federation of BiH while in the RS, position of SNSD has been strongly shaken by very good performance of SDS. The SDA won majority of votes in Bosniak majority areas while SDS and HDZ secured their votes in the Serb and Croat majority areas respectively. In the Federation of BiH, SDP and SBB suffered dramatic fall in votes comparing to the last general elections while in the RS, SNSD, which has dominated politics since 2006 lost significant number of votes, mayoral posts and municipality seats to SDS and some other political parties such as PDP, SP and DNS.