Kulenovic, Nedim --- "Bicameralism(s) in the age of ethnicity: Prospects for reform of legislatures in Bosnia and Herzegovina" [2019] ELECD 1874; in Albert, Richard; Baraggia, Antonia; Fasone, Cristina (eds), "Constitutional Reform of National Legislatures" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2019) 248

Book Title: Constitutional Reform of National Legislatures

Editor(s): Albert, Richard; Baraggia, Antonia; Fasone, Cristina

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

Section: Chapter 15

Section Title: Bicameralism(s) in the age of ethnicity: Prospects for reform of legislatures in Bosnia and Herzegovina

Author(s): Kulenović, Nedim

Number of pages: 19

Abstract/Description:

The judgments of the European Court of Human Rights finding the arrangements of the second chamber of the Bosnian parliament, the House of Peoples, to be discriminatory, call for the serious reexamining of the current power-sharing institutional solutions. At the same time the chamber’s namesake at the sub-state level was successfully charged before the Bosnian Constitutional Court for not being sufficiently ethnically legitimate. Since two-thirds of the chambers’ members are appointed by the sub-state ethnic chamber in question, it is now doubly suspect, with its members not being ethnically legitimate enough, and with its current composition standing in sharp contrast to the liberal democratic ideals of individual human rights. Squaring this circle will prove a formidable challenge. By analysing the features of second houses of parliament at different levels of government, the chapter scrutinises the nature of Bosnian consociational federation and contemplates the models for the reform of its bicameralism(s).