ABSTRACT
The northern Bosnian city of Brcko, built in Austro-Hungarian style on the Sava River, and Mostar, the capital of the Herzegovina in the south, just an hour’s drive from the Adriatic and straddling the Neretva river, are as different in appearance as cities in Bosnia get. Local government in the Republika Srpska (RS) is regulated at the entity level, whereas in the Muslim and Croat-dominated Federation (FBiH), a general framework law left it to the cantons to define the specific competences and funding of the municipal level. The war left both Mostar and Brcko divided, in Mostar the dividing line ran through the city centre; in Brcko the city remained under Serb control, the rural regions were part of the Bosniac–Croat FBiH. After the end of Bosniac–Croat fighting, Mostar was placed under EU administration, lasting from July 1994 to January 1997.
