​​"Two heads are better than one, so three must be even better!" thought Bosnia and Herzegovina, and decided to elect three presidents at once: a Serb, a Bosniak, and a Croat. The three of them mess around serve as president for the entire 4-year term. You can't be elected more than twice in a row, but you can with a break in between. Two of them have even done this already (a Croat and a Bosniak). Nevertheless, the country has 14 (!) living former presidents.

One of the three is appointed chair, and the position rotates every 8 months. Over 4 years, that's exactly 2 complete cycles.

Decisions are made collectively, by unanimous consent. But on controversial issues, this doesn't work at all. For example, Bosniaks and Croats would be happy to recognize Kosovo's independence, but the Serbs are categorically opposed.

Elections are also complicated: Croats living in the Serb Republic have to vote for the Serbian representative, while Serbs who moved to the Federation can't vote for him, even though they'd really like to. It's a mirror situation with the other candidates.

And the real problem is that the presidents' ethnicities are iron-clad in the Dayton Accords. Representatives of other peoples can't be elected. There was a case at the European Court of Human Rights against B&H brought by a Jew and a Roma because of such discrimination. The court ruled back in 2009 that the rules need to be changed, but the system hasn't been reformed since then.

And that wraps up today's civics lesson. And in the photo below is the building in Sarajevo where the presidents meet.