In many cases ownership, operating responsibility and capital improvement tasks are shared by the municipal, canton and entity levels in the Federation, making a clear distinction difficult. The pattern is repeated to a lesser extent in the Republika Srpska, in that there are no regional differences given the lack of a middle tier of self-government.
Instead, due to the geographic distribution of municipalities, their small size and often divided nature parts of settlements are in the Federation and vice versa , local governments suffer from an economy of scale that makes it difficult to apply the universal list of tasks to municipalities of any size.
These general tasks are strikingly similar to those in the Federation local government law and in various canton local government laws that were passed by the end of Mayors and citizens often are hindered by the distance they have to travel to take care of business in the entity capital Banja Luka, and smaller municipalities hope to delegate certain functions back to the entity level.
This is more justified in the Republika Srpska than in the Federation but more difficult, given the geographic realities of the entity. Furthermore, the status and competencies of cities and capitals are not sufficiently regulated and their relationships with higher-level authorities are unclear.
Almost without exception traditional municipal-, canton- and entity-operated institutions and utility corporations deliver public services. Alternative forms of service delivery, such as joint enterprises and private companies are still far from emerging as a true alternative to traditional institutions and public corporations. Municipalities and communal service enterprises in Bosnia and Herzegovina are responsible for providing most local infrastructure.
Although there is discussion of utility concessions to attract equity capital and widespread interest in the idea of municipal borrowing to attract debt capital, there are no clear State or entity policies as to if or how private investment should be identified to help fund local infrastructure. The election of mayors or executive board presidents triggers a new set of appointments of municipal administrative officials and the selection of an executive board in the RS based upon proportional representation achieved during the municipal election the process is similar at the city level in both the Federation and the RS.
In the mixed municipalities of the Federation, these party differences have an ethnic element as well. The canton councils select a canton president and an assembly president in a fashion similar to municipal councils, with the significant difference that canton assemblies also appoint governments in proportions that reflect election results. It is difficult to assess the structure and functioning of municipal offices in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The constitutional provisions and canton-enabling legislation of the Federation call for local councils to establish their own rules of operation, to appoint the appropriate type and number of public officials and to establish commissions, committees and other structures to conduct the tasks that are assigned by Federation law and specific canton legislation.
The same is true in the Republika Srpska, where local assemblies are required to create operating rules and an organisation that matches the tasks assigned to it by the entity government.
At the same time there are strict central regulations on the administrative structures as well as on political appointment procedures, which seem to contradict the principles of Article 6. Personnel working in municipal administrations are either political appointees, who do not have permanent civil servant status, or civil servants, who work mostly in the support and administrative fields. Municipal corporations and public service utilities do not employ civil servants, but as the legal status of these quasi-public entities is clarified in terms of patrimony and regulation, the exact nature of their employees will become more similar to that of private enterprise employees.
Municipal departments and institutions perform authoritative, management and personnel functions similar to most municipalities in Europe. In other words, teachers and social workers may be paid by the canton or the entity, and the building they work in is owned by the next tier of government; the respective municipal department is expected to engage in capital planning, maintenance and capital improvements.
These confusing situations will abound until all cantons have clarified the exact functional roles of municipalities and, in the Republika Srpska, until compensation for geographic distance and small scale economies through a regional administrative unit or a different allocation of funds and tasks has been evaluated thoroughly and established. Funding is a major obstacle to the development of local democracy.
Local authorities' lack of adequate financial resources is ultimate proof of the serious deficiencies of Bosnia and Herzegovina's system of local democracy. At the same time, it is clear from the information below that the principle that local authorities shall be entitled to adequate financial resources, set forth in Article 9 of the European Charter of Local Self-Government, is not properly respected.
Local authorities complain of major financial difficulties, in particular a serious imbalance between their responsibilities and the resources available to them. When analysing the finances of the sub-national level in Bosnia and Herzegovina, one must keep in mind that in the Federation the ten cantons account for an overwhelming majority of public spending, and on a national level the cantons are the largest unit of spending.
These figures reflect the constitutional reality that the entities—and within one entity, the cantons—dominate public spending and the performance of public functions, leaving the State with a small budget and few tasks to perform. Sub-national revenues in both the Federation and Republika Srpska are the dominant public revenues since the State of Bosnia and Herzegovina depends to a large extent on taxes that are shared by the entities with the State.
In other words, with the exception of certain minor excise taxes, the two entities make contributions to support the State budget. The Federation contributes two-thirds and the RS one-third of the cost of operating the State. In practice this means that in both entities, municipalities can lobby rightfully for deficit grants to cover operational and capital budget gaps. This extra-budgetary post facto lobbying consumes the efforts of municipal leaders and seems to be an arbitrary and politically sensitive procedure to outsiders.
In the Federation it is the cantons which hold most power in financial matters. As mentioned before, most canton local government laws date from and These framework laws operate alongside canton budget laws and decrees that allocate canton revenues between the canton and municipal levels. From the standpoint of equity and comparison, the varying degrees of expenditure assignments, deficit grant lobbying, under-funded capital projects and the general laissez faire approach of the federal government make generalisations about the nature of canton-municipal relations rather difficult and subject to distortion unless all ten cantons are described explicitly.
Many canton local government laws are as ambiguous as the Federation version, causing misunderstandings and creative interpretations. Laws as they are mutually—or sometimes one-sidedly—interpreted do not always reflect the literal intention of the text. The law of on allocation of public resources within the Federation provides that municipalities shall be autonomous in matters of local taxation, but in actual fact each canton has specific legislation determining what share of the resources collected in the canton as a whole will be transferred to the municipalities.
Each canton has its own revenue-sharing formula that it can alter on an annual basis. By the typical split of revenues moved strongly towards an share in favour of cantons. Each canton sets its tax-sharing formula independently each year in its budget law, sharing changing proportions of the two major taxes allocated to cantons: that is, the income tax and the goods and services turnover tax.
In some instances cantons also share a portion of the business profits tax. Note that the municipalities are dependent upon transfers from the canton level and that the Federation itself relies on customs duties and excise taxes, a portion of which it passes upward to the State level. This of course is a national average, and depending upon the proportion of the three shared taxes that the canton passes down, the degree of canton leverage can vary greatly.
In the Republika Srpska the situation is similar, with the entity government directly sharing certain taxes with the municipalities. The major contrast with the Federation is that the entity budget law fixes the share of sales tax allocated to municipalities at thirty percent, with a slightly larger share—thirty-five percent—for cities with multiple municipalities within their boundaries.
However, the percentage of local authority resources in the Republic's overall budget cannot be calculated since there are no global provisions for the municipalities and their sources of income are difficult to identify, given the large number of texts dealing with these matters.
Taxes are collected and redistributed through a commercial bank under the supervision of the Ministry of Finance. There are no specific mechanisms for the equalisation of resources. Corporate income taxes stay with the entity, while self-employment taxes are allocated at thirty percent for municipalities. A tax on property also is allocated at thirty percent for municipalities, while personal income tax stays with the entity government in its entirety. Other smaller taxes and license fees are in most cases not shared but collected and used by the layer of administration that imposes them.
Municipalities in both entities are able to raise revenues in the form of fees, penalties, license charges and minor local taxes. Land and property taxes are not based on value but on square meters and the extent to which the land is used for residential or business purposes.
Genuine local tax revenues in both entities have constantly been below ten percent of total revenues in recent years. Municipal borrowing is authorised by budget legislation in both the RS and the Federation.
They authorise borrowing by cantons in the Federation and by municipalities and cities in both entities, however these provisions and the policies underlying them are unclear. For example, it is not clear in some cantons if a canton, after reviewing a municipal borrowing proposal, has to approve such borrowing explicitly and if that approval means an explicit guarantee.
Furthermore, the Federation budget law sets a limit on municipal borrowing at an amount equivalent to twenty percent of its annual budget. However, in practice, there are some indications that both municipal and canton officials mutually interpret a poorly worded Federation law as a debt service , as opposed to absolute debt limit.
Obstacles to genuine municipal borrowing for capital purposes especially in the Federation abound. Some cantons give substantial capital and operating responsibilities for infrastructure to municipalities without providing adequate revenues. And in some cantons, local shares of canton-controlled revenues have been falling. Uncertainty in municipal revenues, uncertainty about municipal responsibilities and large unfunded mandates do not bode well for municipal viability, let alone for municipal borrowing.
Despite massive external support, confidence in the long-term stability of the State and the economy are lacking. Although the horizon of confidence is broadening, an environment that is not perceived to be stable creates a poor context for long-term lending. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, doubts about stability and management at the local level seem dwarfed by country risk concerns, but as the macroeconomic and political situation stabilises, stability and capacity at the local level are likely to become more important.
The current privatisation process could have a negative effect on the municipalities, since the proceeds of privatisation of municipal property will not find their way into the municipalities' coffers but will go to the privatisation agencies carrying out the operations.
If Bosnia and Herzegovina is to achieve genuine local and regional democracy, far-reaching changes must take place in political circles. An efficient, transparent, multi-ethnic administration should be established at all levels to implement the legislation already passed.
The laws should regulate the nature and extent of the supervision which the higher levels exercise over local authorities and the relations between the various levels of government, and this legislation should go hand in hand with legal structures for the settlement of any disputes between the different levels.
These conditions are vital to the development of genuine, stable democracy, and their attainment should be included among the commitments entered into by the country with a view to its European integration.
The different bodies of the Council of Europe should support this process through their structures and technical, legal and administrative assistance programmes. The existence of an appeal procedure would nonetheless be desirable when decisions taken by bodies of the international community begin to have an effect on democratically elected local and regional authorities.
In this context, education — both formal and informal — seems to be the best means of spreading democratic ideas. The primary challenge facing municipalities in BiH is reconstructing local civil society in a psychological and physical sense while providing basic services as required by law.
Contracting out, privatisation, involving nongovernmental organizations NGOs in service delivery and other novel ideas that work in other counties of Central and Eastern Europe are premature in this context. Basic questions regarding patrimony, privatisation and the allocation of tasks, revenues and funds await more stable resolution.
Hopefully, it will be the current four-year political cycle in which war reconstruction gives way to perfecting the involvement of citizens and NGOs in municipal service delivery. In contrast to countries like Poland or Hungary, where decentralisation and municipal empowerment was embraced as a political antidote to the prior system, neither Bosnia and Herzegovina nor the two constituent entities seem to have a strong political commitment to genuine decentralisation to the local level.
However, the country's three major ethnic groups have so far not managed to develop a shared vision for a unified state. Essential aspects of good governance such as accountability, transparency and participation are negatively affected by this failure.
Most of the political parties are organised along ethnic lines and obstruct each other on important political issues. The last general elections took place in , with some of the results still not having been implemented. Citizen Committee. Citizen Engagment. Citizen Participation. Citizen Security. Civic Engagement. Civil Society. Civil Society Initiatives. Concordia Summit. Constitutional Court. Costa Rica. Czech Republic. Dakar Declaration. Dar es Salaam. Day of the girl. Democracy Day. East Africa.
Democracy Promotion. Democratic Governance. Department of State. Digital Inclusion. Eduardo Frei Foundation. El Salvador. Electoral Reform. Empowering Youth. Faustin Archange Touadera. Featured Photo. Featured Photos. Foreign Fighters. Free Elections. Free Press.
Freedom Dinner. Freedom Day. Freedom Party. Gahl Burt. Gender Assessment. Generation Democracy. Get Out the Vote. Global Podcast.
Great Lakes Region. Hanna Hopko. House Democracy Partnership. Human Rights. Ian Khama. Ibrahim Prize. International Advisory Council. International Republican Institute. International Women's Day.
Iron Curtain. Jeane J. Kirkpatrick Award. Jeanne J. JJK Award. John McCain. Juntos Prevenimos. Kenyan Elections. Latin America and the Caribbean. Law Reform. Leadership Training Schools. Lee Kuan Yew. Legislative Strengthening. Where We Work Bosnia and Herzegovina. The World Bank In Bosnia and Herzegovina Bosnia and Herzegovina is an upper middle-income country which has accomplished a great deal since the mids. Bosnia and Herzegovina Overview. Strategy To design this new strategy, a systematic diagnostic analysis was carried out to clarify the challenges that BiH faces on the road to growth and prosperity and to identify possible solutions.
Through the strategic framework, the WBG supports reforms in three areas: Increasing public sector efficiency and effectiveness Creating conditions for accelerated private sector growth Building resilience to natural shocks Key Engagement Improving Road Connectivity and Safety in BiH. Key project results to date: Overall, by delivering emergency recovery goods and supporting the rehabilitation of regional and local infrastructure, the project has benefited over , people in flood affected areas.
The project has already recovered about infrastructure facilities to pre-flood condition, thus exceeding the end target of In Depth. Economic Update. Engagement Strategy.
0コメント