1. As already mentioned, domestic legislation can also certainly be “significant” in terms of importance. Unfortunately, the present analysis cannot distinguish “significant” from “non-significant” domestic legislation or create a hierarchy of importance, because the development of the required objective decision rule is beyond its scope. We therefore cannot assess if “significant” domestic legislation failed more or less frequently than bills which could be considered as less important.
2. Kasapović calls Bosnia an “asymmetrical confederation” (4), Bose “confederal in character” (20), and Carl Bildt, the country's first High Representative, the “most decentralized state in the world” (qtd. in Belloni, “State Building” 44).
3. In the HoP, the vital interest veto was invoked only four times in 11 years (Trnka 13). Vital interest has one decisive disadvantage, compared to entity-voting: It does not stop the legislation process for good. Whenever vital interest is invoked, the HoP has to set up a commission to decide on its justified invocation; if there is no agreement in that commission, the Constitutional Court will rule if the vital interest of the complaining ethnicity was indeed threatened (Bosnia and Herzegovina, “Rules of Procedure House of Peoples” Art. 161, Art. 162; Trnka 13). Between 2006 and 2010, vital interest was deployed only once, by the Bosniak caucus in May 2008, when the house adopted a non-binding resolution asking the CoM to submit legislation that would allow the creation of a Croat public broadcaster. However, the Constitutional Court decided that vital interest had not been violated, which probably did not encourage a more frequent use of the veto (Constitutional Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina).
4. Annex X of the Dayton Peace Agreement establishes the presence of a High Representative (since 2002 also EU Special Representative). The High Representative watches over the adherence to the Dayton Agreement by the former war parties. To carry out this task, he has large competencies (“Bonn Powers”) that entitle him to actively intervene in Bosnian politics through “Decisions,” if he considers the Agreement as being endangered (Bosnia and Herzegovina, “The General Framework Agreement” Annex X; Chandler 157).
5. These are just estimates. Until today no official numbers exist on the post-war ethnic composition of Bosnia. The last census was held in 1991, when Bosnia was still part of Yugoslavia. Today, approximately 7% of the total population belong to minorities like Jews, Roma, or are offspring of mixed marriages. They are subsumed under the term “Others” and can run for public office in the state government and the House of Representatives – but not for the three-fold Presidency and the House of Peoples. This constitutional arrangement was rejected by the European Court of Human Rights in December 2009 as being discriminatory (European Court of Human Rights), urging Bosnia to carry out a respective constitutional reform, which so far has been stalled.