Description
Book SynopsisWhat is the appropriate political response to mass atrocity? In Hijacked Justice, Jelena Subotic traces the design, implementation, and political outcomes of institutions established to deal with the legacies of violence in the aftermath of the Yugoslav wars. She finds that international efforts to establish accountability for war crimes in the former Yugoslavia have been used to pursue very different local political goals. Responding to international pressures, Serbia, Croatia, and Bosnia have implemented various mechanisms of transitional justicethe systematic addressing of past crimes after conflicts end. Transitional justice in the three countries, however, was guided by ulterior political motives: to get rid of domestic political opponents, to obtain international financial aid, or to gain admission to the European Union. Subotic argues that when transitional justice becomes hijacked for such local political strategies, it fosters domestic backlash, deepens political ins
Trade Review
Subotic argues that... international and national courts and truth commissions... have been used... to dispose of political opponents, secure economic assistance, or grease the way into the European Union. How this has happened and what those committed to making the new norms stick should do about it drive this book. Subotic goes about her study in an exceedingly clearheaded fashion; not only is she in full command of the relevant theoretical literature, but she deploys and then extends it in compact, crystal-clear paragraphs. The writing and argumentation are a model of what social science should be.
-- Robert Legvold * Foreign Affairs *
