Bosnia and Herzegovina has just been to the polls.

Simple enough, you might think. People vote, somebody wins, and a government gets formed.

Except, as I’ve discovered during more than 25 years of living here, very little about Bosnia and Herzegovina is quite that straightforward.

This isn't an episode about who won, who lost, or which political party I think people should support. I deliberately stay away from party politics here.

Instead, I wanted to try something much simpler: to explain how elections in Bosnia and Herzegovina actually work.

There are two entities, the Brčko District, ten cantons within the Federation, different parliaments and assemblies, and a country which, rather unusually, has three members of its Presidency rather than one president.

And depending on where you live, you don't necessarily vote for the same things as somebody living elsewhere in the country.

Much of this goes back to the Dayton Peace Agreement and the political system created at the end of the war in the 1990s.

So in this episode, I'm putting my own political opinions to one side and trying to make sense of it all from the perspective of an Englishman who has called Bosnia and Herzegovina home for more than a quarter of a century.

Because when somebody tells you that “Bosnia has just had an election”…

there's rather more to it than you might think.

An Englishman in the Balkans is a weekly podcast about the people, places and everyday life of Bosnia and Herzegovina, told by David Bailey, who has lived here for more than 25 years. New episodes arrive every Tuesday.

Thanks for listening. If this episode was worth your time, the best thing you can do is pass it on to someone who'd enjoy it.

Every episode, and more about my life here, is at anenglishmaninthebalkans.com.

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