Serb Democratic Party

The Serb Democratic Party (SDS) was a political party in Bosnia and Herzegovina formed in 1990. It emerged from the fragmentation of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia and was part of a tacit electoral coalition with the Bosniak Party of Democratic Action (SDA) and the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) for the country's first multiparty elections.1

The SDS, along with the SDA and HDZ, aimed to represent their respective ethnic groups. However, incompatible political and territorial ambitions, fueled by external patrons in Croatia and Serbia, led to the failure of a unified multiparty leadership and ultimately contributed to the outbreak of war in 1992. Following the Dayton Accords in 1995, the SDS, along with the SDA and HDZ, continued to garner significant voter support, though other parties also gained prominence. The institutionalization of ethnicity in the political system has historically placed parties with less ethnocentric agendas at a disadvantage.12