Aida Ibricevic
This chapter contributes to the growing literature on external voting, viewed as a transnational practice of external citizenship. Our chapter adds to the debates on the legitimacy of the right to vote without residing on the national territory by focusing on the case of Bosnia and Herzegovina, a post-conflict society with a large, mainly conflict-generated diaspora. The case of Bosnia and Herzegovinian external voting is particularly interesting, because of a large disparity between its normative intention of reversing the political effects of ethnic cleansing and its actual implementation. The question we aim to answer is whether external voting in Bosnia and Herzegovina lives up to its normative claim. To explore this question, we conduct legal analysis of Annex VII and Annex III of the Dayton Peace Agreement, which respectively provide the constitutional basis for physical and “political” return. We next turn to legal analysis of the BiH Election Law and BiH Law on Residence to show how both these laws have moved away from the original intention of the Dayton Peace Agreement (DPA) the de facto acceptance of postwar permanent residence as the main basis for all voter registration, including external voting registration. Finally, we attempt to evaluate the normative claim within the DPA, the promise of external voting allowing for “political return” through the reversal of the political effects of ethnic cleansing. To evaluate this claim we present a brief historical overview of postwar elections in BiH, describe some notable initiatives for mobilizing the diaspora vote such as “Glasaću za Srebrenicu” (I will vote for Srebrenica), “Prvi mart” (March First), and “Moja adresa Srebrenica” (My address is in Srebrenica), and discuss some illustrative examples from the 2018 general and 2020 local elections, which could potentially be indicative of trends within BiH external voting.
LINK: The diaspora vote in Bosnia and Herzegovina
