Bosnia’s Municipal Election Results – a Small Step Forward

Each problem is helpfully embodied by the two mentioned political blocs: the SDA is an avatar of Bosnia's kleptocratic political elite, while the SNSD is the most significant threat to the country's sovereignty.

Because these are distinct problems, they require distinct solutions. And in each case, the results of the municipal elections have offered a path forward.

In the case of the SDA, voters in the metropolitan Sarajevo area and in other major cities in the Federation handed the party stinging losses.

The party has been reduced to an almost wholly rural enterprise; rejected by the economic and social centres of Bosnia, which voted decidedly for the reform-oriented "Foursome" coalition, despite its disparate roster.

That is the most salient development here: in the Federation entity, genuine political alternatives exist, which provide meaningful ideological and programmatic alternatives to the SDA's stilted and largely substance-free rhetoric about the unity of the Bosniak people and the glories of their near three decades of dominance among this electorate.

Without any need to endorse all of their policies, this very clearly not what the Foursome coalition are offering; and it is not what voters want from them, especially in the case of the left-liberal Social Democratic Party and the Our Party.

Moreover, these are parties with a clear pro-EU and pro-NATO orientation. So is the SDA - in theory - but its record on corruption and the rule of law has clearly convinced a significant portion of the electorate that there are better custodians of the country's Euro-Atlantic aspirations.

This is important because the situation in the country's other entity, Republika Srpska, RS, is almost the opposite.

Among the...