Unfortunate electoral designs for postconflict democracies: lessons from Dayton for the Western Balkans

This paper argues that the combination of electoral and institutional design in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) implemented by the Dayton Peace Agreement (DPA) – while intended to stabilize peace through consociational and territorial powersharing – paradoxically entrenches ethnopolitical divisions rather than fosters transformation. The use of open-list proportional representation (PR) electoral system and the Sainte-Laguë method for allocating legislative seats ensures political visibility of ethnic groups; however, simultaneous provision of reserved seats for politically relevant groups inhibits cross-ethnic political cohesion. As group-based identity politics and an integrative drift favoring majority groups prevails in BiH is often taken as given, this paper suggests that this specific combination of electoral rules and seat allocation hinder both meaningful accommodation and broader integration of minorities in electoral wards, despite emphasizing the need for minority visibility.