The Western Balkans entered October with two important elections only three weeks apart, but with very different degrees of uncertainty. Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) voted on 4 October, while Serbia goes to snap parliamentary elections on 25 October. Their respective outcomes could reshape political relations across the Drina, particularly the alliance between two strongmen, Aleksandar Vučić and Milorad Dodik, with significant consequences for both countries' further path towards European integration.
Perhaps more importantly, the elections offer contrasting tests of a similar model of political power. BiH's vote has largely reaffirmed the status quo, while Serbia's could overturn it. Both raise the question of how entrenched political elites have maintained their grip on power through patronage, institutional capture and unequal electoral competition, despite years of democratic stagnation. The question now is whether that formula is still working.
Preliminary results in BiH point to continuity rather than political realignment. The three parties that have dominated postwar politics - Party of Democratic Action (SDA) among predominantly Bosniak voters, Alliance of Independent Social Democrats (SNSD) among Serb voters and Croatian Democratic Union of Bosnia and Herzegovina (HDZ BiH) among Croat voters - once again emerged as the strongest forces. Although these three parties are likely to seek additional coalition partners, potentially including multiethnic parties, they will be able to form governments at all levels, diminishing the significance of any additional partners. Several parties that entered government after the 2022 elections lost considerable support, underscoring the lasting advantage of established party structures over newer, more personalized political projects.
The clearest winner, however, was Milorad Dodik. Although a 2025 conviction removed him from public office and barred him from political activity, the election demonstrated how little this weakened his control in Republika Srpska (RS), one of BiH’s two subnational entities under the constitutional framework established by the 1995 Dayton Peace Agreement. SNSD won the entity’s key races and remained its dominant political force, while a fragmented opposition failed to turn Dodik’s legal troubles into an electoral opening. Dodik’s son Igor is also increasingly mentioned publicly as a possible candidate for prime minister of RS, which would further consolidate the family’s control over the entity’s political life. Dodik now enters the post-election period without an official title but with renewed political leverage, including in his relationship with Belgrade.
Serbia's election represents the culmination of a political crisis that began with the Novi Sad railway station tragedy in November 2024, which killed 16 people. What began as student-led protests demanding accountability developed into the largest sustained protest movement of Vučić's fourteen-year rule, drawing support from citizens, political parties and civic organizations across Serbia. What makes this movement politically significant beyond Serbia is its ability to overcome a problem that has limited almost all recent protest movements globally: translating mass mobilization into an organized challenge for political power. Despite its leaderless, decentralized structure, it has sustained mobilization for almost two years, developed an electoral platform bringing together academics, professionals, famous sportsmen, activists and artists, and emerged as the principal challenger to an entrenched, authoritarian ruler.
Recent polls and, perhaps more tellingly, the atmosphere on Serbia's streets suggest that an electoral breakthrough is a real possibility. The so-called Student List emerged as the principal challenger, with the prospect of securing enough seats to form a new government. Although eighteen electoral lists are competing, only a handful appear certain to cross the 3% parliamentary threshold, reinforcing the perception of a contest between two political alternatives. What was initially described as a referendum-like election has therefore taken on an almost plebiscitary character.
Vučić, meanwhile, has resigned the presidency and is campaigning as a private citizen, seeking to return to executive power as prime minister. Although no longer formally the leader of the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS), he heads its electoral coalition, rebranded as “Aleksandar Vučić – United Serbia”. For the first time since 2012, he holds no public office. His possible electoral defeat could prolong that absence considerably, a prospect that might induce some separation anxiety in a leader so accustomed to exercising power with few checks.
Twenty-first-century technology, all too familiar stale politics
BiH’s election looked far more progressive than the politics it reproduced. For the first time nationwide, voters were authenticated electronically and ballots processed through optical scanners, measures imposed by the High Representative in March 2024 after domestic institutions failed to agree on electoral integrity reforms. Although observers reported problems with identification devices and scanner interruptions, they still assessed the process as a significant improvement.
BiH used twenty-first-century technology to reproduce a 1990s political map, dominated by ethno-national parties and identity politics rather than reform or EU integration.
Turnout fell by nearly 10 percentage points compared with the previous elections, reaching a record low of around 42%. While this may reflect voter fatigue, stricter identification could also have reduced electoral fraud. The official rate is also distorted by a voter register of roughly 3.4 million people in a country with an estimated resident population of fewer than three million. Members of the Central Election Commission have themselves called for a comprehensive review of the Central Voters’ Register. With about 1.4 million ballots cast, the low official turnout may therefore reflect not only abstention but also a cleaner electoral process and an inflated register.
Yet electoral technologies can improve the integrity of election day without addressing the many irregularities that occur before and during the campaign. Civil society observers documented numerous abuses in this cycle, including the misuse of public resources through intensified public works and campaigning by public officials, one-off payments to vulnerable groups and the use of children in campaign activities. In most cases, the Central Election Commission did not sanction the violations on the grounds on which they had been reported, while the penalties imposed have mainly concerned premature campaigning and have been too low to have a meaningful deterrent effect.
Media coverage was particularly skewed in RS, where the public broadcaster overwhelmingly favored the ruling SNSD. According to Transparency International in BiH, SNSD received 28 hours of airtime, compared with just minutes for the opposition. The imbalance was especially stark in the RS presidential race: the SNSD candidate received over five hours of coverage, against just 69 seconds for his opponent.
Old tricks, a new challenger
Meanwhile, Serbia approaches its election with more traditional technology but all too familiar integrity problems. Serbian election watchdog organization, CRTA, is conducting long-term observation and has documented pressure on voters, misuse of public resources and extreme media inequality. The increasingly confrontational campaign has also raised fears of further violence, with election observers and civil society actors warning that political tensions could escalate before or after polling day. The local elections that took place in spring 2026 were already marked by intimidation and violence.
The comprehensive audit of the Unified Voter Register, repeatedly recommended by ODIHR, will not be completed before the election. To illustrate the scale of the problem with the Register, Serbia has close to 6.5 million registered voters, nearly as many as its entire 2022 census population, children included.
Traditional media, largely captured by the regime, are flooded with political propaganda in favor of the ruling party.
During just one monitored week in September, representatives of the ruling majority received three-quarters of television airtime allocated to political actors, while CRTA documented more than 1,200 public activities by senior state officials in the preceding months. CRTA also estimates that the announced pre-election one-off payment measures amount to almost €1 billion, raising concerns about the use of public money for electoral advantage.
Disputed voter registrations and reported obstacles to voting abroad add to concerns about an exceptionally unequal electoral contest. This time, more than 100,000 members of the Serbian diaspora have registered to vote abroad, roughly three times as many as in previous elections. Many are deeply dissatisfied with Vučić's rule, which, for some, was among the reasons they left Serbia in the first place. Yet polling stations remain unavailable in some countries with substantial demand, while many new spots have opened in RS. In Germany, Serbian Ministry of Foreign Affairs officials even claimed they had requested additional polling stations, only for the German Embassy in Belgrade to confirm that no such request had been received.
There is also a literal connection between the integrity of Serbia's election and that of BiH: the voters themselves. Serbia's disputed 2023 election exposed organized voter migration from RS, including questionable residency registrations used to bolster the ruling party's majorities in targeted municipalities. While voting by dual citizens is a legitimate democratic right, manipulating residence registration or using state resources to engineer electoral advantage in this manner is another matter.
However, this time something new happened. The Student List campaigned directly among Serbian citizens in several cities in RS and Brčko District, where Serbian opposition actors have had little presence. The campaign faced police interventions and incidents occurred before it was suspended for safety reasons. Yet these institutional pressures did not produce broader solidarity among political parties or student organizations in RS. Some student groups close to the ruling SNSD publicly opposed the Student List, while support came mainly from individual opposition politicians and parts of civil society. This limited response also reflected the cautious calculations of RS opposition parties toward developments in Serbia. Some of these parties have at times depended on political and financial support from Serbia’s governing structures. More broadly, mainstream RS parties place ties with Serbia, viewed as the Serb national homeland, at the centre of their ethno-national agendas and therefore rarely criticize Belgrade’s domestic politics or policies toward BiH and RS. Even so, an electorate long approached almost exclusively through the SNS–SNSD relationship has become contested political territory.
After 25 October: who holds power?
BiH's elections have reinforced the status quo, with Dodik retaining political influence despite losing office. Serbia's election, meanwhile, could either consolidate Vučić's rule or end fourteen years of SNS rule, potentially reshaping the Vučić–Dodik alliance and relations between Belgrade and Banja Luka, and, consequently, between Belgrade and Sarajevo. Two scenarios illustrate what is at stake on both sides of the Drina.
The first is continuity. If SNS retains power, Vučić's return as prime minister would preserve a political system built around a single dominant authoritarian leader. Given the escalation of repression and institutional pressure over the past two years, further democratic decline would be expected. Serbia could move toward the more openly repressive political models seen in Georgia or Belarus, although these remain warnings rather than inevitable outcomes. Serbia's relations with BiH would likely continue to be seen through the prism of the Vučić–Dodik alliance and would also depend on which political party controlled BiH's foreign-affairs portfolio.
During Vučić's rule, Belgrade has largely bypassed Sarajevo, focusing instead on the special relations between Serbia and RS and on the alliance's formal and informal networks. In Sarajevo, this approach has often been seen as enabling activities detrimental to BiH's constitutional order and sovereignty.
The second scenario is a Student List victory and Serbia's first national transfer of power since 2012. But winning an election and taking control of a captured state are two different things. Vučić is no longer the formal SNS president, yet he could retain considerable influence through party structures and networks of political loyalty and influence built over fourteen years in power. The approaching presidential election, which must take place before the end of the year, adds another complication. A student-backed parliamentary majority could coexist with an SNS-backed president, creating competing centres of political authority. Even if SNS lost both elections, Vučić could remain an influential figure outside government, although his ability to exercise power would depend on whether those networks survived the loss of office. Most importantly, SNS would retain control of most towns and municipalities across Serbia. Although much of this local power structure depends on access to central government resources and could weaken without them, it would not disappear overnight, leaving Vučić with a considerable political foothold outside national office.
Dodik's position in RS offers an interesting parallel. Both leaders could find themselves outside public office while remaining politically influential, though under different circumstances. This could complicate relations across the Drina. A new Serbian government would have little reason to abandon its institutional ties with RS, which extend well beyond the two leaders. The students' campaign there already suggests that they intend to challenge SNS's political monopoly rather than Serbia's relationship with Banja Luka. This continuity helps explain the region’s skepticism toward potential political change in Serbia: a shift in electoral power in Belgrade would not necessarily change Serbia's regional relationships or, at least, its approach to BiH. Even in the event of a change in power, Dodik might continue to treat Vučić as his principal political ally, even if someone else were running Serbia. Belgrade and Banja Luka could then have a relationship running on two parallel tracks.
Can political turnover restart European integration?
Electoral continuity also leaves the institutional obstacles that have stalled BiH’s European integration largely unchanged. The EU was almost entirely absent as a campaign issue, while parties formally committed to membership rarely turned that commitment into concrete reform proposals. SNSD went further by portraying EU demands on the rule of law and institutional reform as measures directed against RS and the Serb population.
The consequences of this stagnation are increasingly clear. More than two years after the European Council agreed to open accession negotiations in March 2024, the conditions for moving forward have been progressively scaled back in the hope of securing at least a minimal political consensus, yet even that has proved impossible. BiH also remains the regional laggard in accessing the Reform and Growth Facility. Delays have already resulted in the loss of 10% of its allocation, while the country still lacks access to nearly EUR 1 billion of its allocated funds.
As Brussels has struggled to build domestic momentum, political actors have increasingly turned to other centres of power. Dodik best illustrates this shift. His ties with Moscow remain strong, as shown by his meeting with Vladimir Putin days before the election, while the Trump administration’s decision to lift sanctions imposed on him and his associates for actions that undermined the Dayton Peace Agreement and for systemic corruption marked a major shift in Washington’s approach. Dodik has actively used RS’s lobbying networks in the US and cast both Trump and Putin as key to his political recovery. While the EU ties financial support and accession progress to institutional reform, other external actors offer political access, investment, or security ties without the same conditionalities. For political elites used to avoiding hard domestic compromises, such alternatives may seem increasingly attractive. With the parties behind much of the previous mandate’s deadlock still central to government formation, and record-low turnout showing growing distance between citizens and politics, the election results offer little reason to expect rapid change.
For Serbia, the two scenarios imply completely different trajectories. An SNS victory would preserve the existing relationship with Brussels: formal commitment to EU membership alongside continued deterioration in democratic standards. A Student List victory could restart the accession process through institutional reform and anti-corruption measures, although Kosovo and other foreign-policy disagreements would likely remain major political issues that are difficult to resolve.
Political change could also make Serbia a less predictable EU partner. The student movement has criticized Brussels' tolerance of Vučić's democratic backsliding, and a new government might prove less accommodating on several issues. This exposes a contradiction in the EU's approach to the Western Balkans. For years, Brussels has been criticized for prioritizing predictable leaders over democratic standards. A transfer of power could initially create greater uncertainty, particularly if Vučić retained influence outside government or the presidency became a centre of political contestation in the near future.
The EU would then face a choice between the predictability of established political relationships and the uncertainties of democratic change. After years of being accused of trading democracy for stability, Brussels may have to accept some instability to get democracy back on track. Without meaningful democratic progress, its ambitious enlargement goals in the Western Balkans are unlikely to be achieved.