НАСТАНАК И ДРЖАВНОСТ РЕПУБЛИКЕ СРПСКЕ - ОД ДРЖАВЕ ДО ЕНТИТЕТА БОСНЕ И ХЕРЦЕГОВИНЕ, ОД СВОЈЕ ПРОШЛОСТИ И САДАШЊОСТИ КА БУДУЋНОСТИ
THE CREATION AND STATEHOOD OF THE REPUBLIC OF SRPSKA: From a state to a B&H entity, from the past and present toward the future

Summary/Abstract: The turbulent events in the territory of the SFRY and in the Socialist Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina in the 1990s can be observed and analyzed from historical, legal and constitutional perspective. These events are still topical and highly important to historians, politicologists, and constitutionalists, since they triggered the creation of the Republic of Srpska, first as a state of the Serbian people of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and later as a constitutional entity and an integral part of a complex state of Bosnia and Herzegovina. At the beginning of the 1990s, the Serbian people in Bosnia and Herzegovina wanted to preserve the federal state (SFRY), in its federal form of government. Legal and legitimate representatives of the Serbs advocated for changing the statehood status of SR Bosnia and Herzegovina, in compliance with the constitution of that time. The secession of Slovenia and Croatia triggered the dissolution of the SFRY, which inevitably resulted in the dissolution of the constitutional order of SR Bosnia and Herzegovina. The lack of consensus among the constitutive peoples of SR Bosnia and Herzegovina on the change of the statehood status and the form of its future organisation resulted in the outbreak of a civil war. The dissolution of SR Bosnia and Herzegovina institutions and its territorial organisation eventually resulted in the creation of the Republic of Srpska, and then the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Exposed to strong political, military and economic pressure during the civil war and in its aftermath (during the peace-building negotiations in Dayton), the Republic of Srpska accepted to become a constituent part of the B&H Federation. The Dayton Peace Agreement (Accords) affirmed the independence of Bosnia and Herzegovina, its constitutional order, and its bipartite structure composed of the Republic of Srpska and the B&H Federation, as two equal constitutive and state-building entities. In the past 27 years since its creation, the Constitution of the Republic of Srpska has sustained a series of changes, for various reasons. When analyzing the status of the Republic of Srpska in Bosnia and Herzegovina, its current position and loyalty toward a common state are based on adherence to the Dayton Peace Agreement and an endeavour to preserve its political, national, ethical, cultural and every other form of survival, identity and subjectivity. The European integrations cannot and should not be the reason for constitutional changes and for arriving at solutions contrary to the Dayton agreement.

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