Since the war´s end in the 1990s, Bosnia and Herzegovina, a young nation in the center of Europe, has struggled to establish a functional democratic system. In line with the Dayton Agreement, which ended the conflict, the nation was split up into two autonomous regions, one of which would belong to the Serbian population and the other to the Bosnian and Croatian populations. In addition to being a peace treaty, the Dayton Agreement would also serve as the nation´s constitution with the intention to construct a democratic government and society. Bosnia and Herzegovina have struggled to establish a fully democratic state of governance since the peace, because of the Dayton Agreement´s power-sharing model, which in practice has given room for the country´s rulers as well as international actors, to view the country as a surface where two independent parts meets, rather than a unified state. The aim of this study is to examine Bosnia and Herzegovina´s democratic constraints from 2018 to 2022 using Wolfgang Merkel´s theory of embedded and defective democracy. It also seeks to determine to what extent Bosnia and Herzegovina can be considered as a defective democracy, based on the theory´s premises. The outcome of this study, in short, implies that Bosnia and Herzegovina´s democratic constraints can be attributed to national political abuse of power, together with corruption, the absence of functioning state institutions and an undue reliance on international actors.

The aim of this thesis is to numerically evaluate democratic consolidation in Eastern European countries of the former Eastern Bloc. To compare these countries with each other and decide which of these countries can be considered as consolidated democracies. Secondary aim is to find which factors supported this consolidation or at least correlate with it. Theoretical basis of this work is Wolfgang Merkel's theory of democratic consolidation. He divides democratic consolidation into four levels: constitutional consolidation, representative consolidation, behavioral consolidation and democratic consolidation of the political culture. Each level of democratic consolidation is numerically expressed, with usage of Bertelsmann's transformation index data, separately for all states in two-year intervals since 2005 to 2015. Based on that, overall democratic consolidation is calculated. Therefore, we can compare countries between each other and in time. Correlation between factors supporting consolidation and overall democratic consolidation is expressed by Pearson correlation coefficient. This work is beneficial in creating and describing method, which can be used for numerical expression of democratic consolidation in any state since 2005 to 2015 without author's subjective influence. Another benefit is...