CONTEMPORARY ISSUES IN LOCAL GOVERNANCE IN BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA AND POLICY SUGGESTIONS FOR THE IMPROVEMENT OF MUNICIPAL SERVICES

This paper utilizes sources from various government and independent auditors’ agencies, organizations for providing key inputs, data, and assistance with the analysis. Our research looks, among several other areas into the enabling environment, which was researched through a prism of various laws and regulations contributing to the municipal performance. Demand and supply sites of municipal services were explored, in addition to various service outcomes. Local service delivery outcomes are found to be extremely uneven across municipalities, cities, and sectors. The access to services was found to be relatively poor with inadequate customer satisfaction. Municipalities and cities are burdened by the lack of resources in addition to severe issues in slow or non-implementation of e-governance initiatives. There is an immediate need to expand fiscal space in addition to increasing access to basic services. As far as factors influencing service delivery outcomes are concerned, they could be divided within five critical dimensions, while the issues and examples of unfavorable financial auditors’ reports and improvements in the horizontal (supply side) and vertical (demand side) accountability were also addressed (Document of the World Bank Sustainable Development Department Europe and Central Asia Region).