Bosnian Constitutional Reform: Twenty Years after the Failure of the April Package

The Dayton Agreement, created by the 1995 agreement between Bosnian wartime leaders that ended the Bosnian war, was never meant to last. The Agreement affirmed peace and a single sovereign state known as Bosnia and Herzegovina composed of two parts: the largely Serb-populated Republika Srpska and mainly Croat-Bosniak-populated Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. 

The system created was intended to be temporary, in place until a new constitution was agreed upon by the three main ethnic groups in the country: Bosniaks, Serbs and Croats, in due course. The Dayton system encompasses two entities and a third district, five presidents, fourteen parliaments and more than 500 ministries – a structure that is woefully dysfunctional on all counts. However, thirty-one years later, Dayton remains largely untouched, and no major constitutional reform in the multi-ethnic, highly, decentralised state has materialised. 

The April Package of 2006 was the closest Bosnia came to large-scale constitutional reform that would have altered the Dayton system. The reforms would have created a more functional central government, increased the size of state-level parliaments to reflect their enhanced importance, and were advertised as Bosnia’s transition from its ‘Dayton phase’ into a new ‘Brussels phase’. However, to pass constitutional amendments in Bosnia, parliament requires a two-thirds majority, and the April Package fell just two votes short. The package failed because of maximalist political manoeuvring in a deeply divided nation. 

The main opponents were new offshoots from Bosnia’s main ethnonationalist parties, most notably former Prime Minister Haris Silajdžić’s Party for Bosnia and Herzegovina (SBiH) and the offshoot of the Croatian Democratic Union of Bosnia and Herzegovina (HDZBiH), HDZ1990. Both parties advocated a rejectionist line, similar to the Democratic Unionist Party in the Good Friday talks in Northern Ireland in the late 1990s. Electorally, this was a shrewd move. The Bosnian public was  skeptical of the reform package, and SBiH and HDZ1990 would  later gain support in the 2006 Bosnian General Election at the expense of the main ethnonationalist parties, with Silajdžić becoming the Bosniak member of the tripartite presidency. However, their opposition killed the reform package during the best chance of achieving such a feat and crushed Bosnia’s early-2000s democratic momentum, which was replaced by the old politics of ethno-national considerations and personal interest.

Unfortunately, since 2006, the Bosnian political atmosphere has not been conducive to such an initiative succeeding. The 2006 election saw Milorad Dodik coming to power in Republika Srpska (RS), one of Bosnia’s two main entities, a figure once seen as a ‘breath of fresh air’ by Madeleine Albright and praised by those such as Richard Holbrooke and Robin Cook. However, Dodik’s rise to power coincided with his ‘metamorphosis’ from a moderate reformer to a hardline nationalist, outflanking the Serb Democratic Party (SDS), founded by now-indicted war criminal Radovan Karadžić, to win power in RS. After assuming control, Dodik followed a strong anti-Sarajevo line,  repeatedly threatened secession, and turned RS into an illiberal, authoritarian state. Dodik  became increasingly rogue and extreme until the Central Election Commission removed him from office in August 2025 for refusing to respect the Constitutional Court’s rulings and the decisions of the international High Representative, Christian Schmidt, whose purpose it is to oversee the civilian implementation of the Dayton Agreement.

Although Dodik may be gone, his party’s (the Alliance of Independent Social Democrats, SNSD) control of RS and the Serb seat on the presidency means he still acts as the puppet master, retaining control behind the scenes. Furthermore, none of Bosnia’s main parties has the political will to pursue constitutional reform. The 2006 attempt was backed by a heavily involved international community through the then High Representative Paddy Ashdown. However,  after the package  failed and Ashdown was criticised as too interventionist and as ‘the Viceroy of Bosnia’, the international community,  facing a new conflict in Kosovo, became disinterested in Bosnia, and  its partial withdrawal led to a revival of nationalism in Bosnian politics. Without international incentives, such as funds or a credible European Union membership perspective, Bosnia’s ruling ethnonationalist parties have no reason to seek constitutional reform.

Simply put, the existing system works for them. The Dayton system in its current form encourages ethnic politics and effectively secures ethnonationalist parties in power. Why, then, would these same parties seek to change a system from which they directly benefit? Bosnian politics is extremely zero-sum; the same parties and even individuals (such as Dodik, HDZBiH’s Dragan Čović, and Bakir Izetbegović of the Bosniak Party of Democratic Action (SDA)) have  dominated politics for years.  Because the system  enables the carving out of ‘territories’  where ethnonationalist parties can extend clientelist incentives to voters in exchange for support , Bosnian politics is very static, and  the parties in power have an interest in  maintaining the status quo. Therefore, most reform measures  over the past twenty years have come from  High Representative intervention rather than agreement between local parties.

Consequently, twenty years after the 2006 constitutional reform, it appears as unlikely as ever. With the Peace Implementation Council’s Steering Board highly fragmented and divided both  over Bosnia and  its broader relations, the international community is at its weakest in Bosnia since the war and in no position to influence a new reform push. In fact, Schmidt warned that the country as a state is vulnerable, and that the nation may fall apart under American and Russian pressure. Therefore, the parties in power have no incentive to enact constitutional reform and will retain the status quo and keep Bosnia in its current disunited, dysfunctional, and ‘ethnicised’ state as it suits their desire for continued power.

Image: Wikimedia Commons/NATO

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