In her book, Jelena Subotić examines the design and implementation of transitional justice programs in Serbia, Croatia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina in the aftermath of the Yugoslav wars. She argues that initial plans for transitional justice became “hijacked” through a process of political instrumentalizing of the norms of transitional justice, resulting in inadequate and often counterproductive policy implications in each of the countries: “Instead of adopting international norms and institutions of transitional justice because they serve a desirable social purpose—truth seeking, justice, and reconciliation—domestic political elites have used these models to pursue quite localized political agendas” (pp. 166–67). This has “cheapened the very idea of transitional justice” (p. 82) and undermined the purpose of an authentic reckoning with the past.

Central to Subotić's argument is the role that international transitional justice institutions have played in the promotion, construction, and implementation of programs. She argues that these institutions have become a “professionalized international justice industry” (p. 21), with a focus on “streamlined” justice goals (p. 5). She explains how international pressure contributed to the problem of technical compliance with international demands coupled with national-level rejection of the “profound social transformation these norms require” (p. 167). She suggests that “the purpose of this book is to show that what happens in real politics differs significantly from the ideals set out by international justice entrepreneurs” (p. 23).

The author employs a comparative case study approach, varying both transitional regimes and international pressure, to show different transitional justice implementation in Serbia, Croatia, and Bosnia. She presents three types of international pressure: coercive, symbolic, and bureaucratic pressure. Serbia is an example of coercive pressure, namely, carrots and sticks to coerce compliance. Croatia is an example of symbolic international pressure, with more accolades and symbolic inclusion as incentives for good behavior. Bosnia is an example of bureaucratic pressure, where the international community actually designed and administered the transitional justice program. These three types of international pressure are filtered through three different domestic political coalitions, defined as “norm resisters in Serbia, instrumental adopters in Croatia, and international norm promoters in Bosnia” (p. 9). The author develops a series of testable hypotheses associated with these two variables to explain variation in implementation of transitional justice measures. She argues that this theoretical rubric could be generalized to other countries facing similar postconflict transitional justice situations.

Subotić presents a historically rich narrative, with well-chronicled events both during and after the conflict. Her work is supported by substantial archival research and personal interviews of both regional elites and transnational actors in the three countries. One of the strengths of her book is the use of personal interviews and primary documents to process-trace the case specifics. It is a well-researched edition to the literature on postconflict Yugoslavia due to the richness of the case materials. However, there are theoretical and empirical problems that undermine its generalizability as a study of transitional justice.

First, the author asserts that she is posing an important puzzle, namely, why there is a failure to implement transitional justice measures. She suggests that this failure to implement the letter and the spirit of transitional justice poses “a puzzling political phenomenon and a disappointing outcome of an elaborate set of international transitional justice policies” (p. 6). However, given the substantial literature documenting how transitional justice measures have been politicized by domestic elites for personal gains with incomplete implementation, it would be more puzzling if there was an absence of political manipulation of transitional justice. George Orwell's famous line from 1984—“Who controls the past, controls the future: who controls the present, controls the past”—is so oft cited in the transitions literature as to be somewhat of a cliché (1949, Book 1, Chapter 3, p. 32). The politics of memory focuses on the way in which the reconstruction of the past is a political act, often instrumentally controlled to meet political ends. As a novel, central, operating puzzle, the book falls short.

Second, had the author augmented her literature review with details from transitional justice experiences in Central and Eastern Europe, she would have seen rich explanations of political manipulation of transitional justice measures. A substantial body of scholarship has documented how lustration laws, trials, truth commissions, file access, and memory institutions have been used as political tools in the postauthoritarian transitions. Lustration laws, in particular, have been used to disadvantage political opponents in the region and have been caught in cycles of political manipulation. While Subotić is focused on trials and truth commissions (p. 18), she does not limit the analysis or its generalizability to postgenocide conflicts. From this perspective, Serbia, Croatia, and Bosnia strike a strong family resemblance to the other postcommunist states; the politicization of transitional justice is the norm, not the exception.

Third, the cases do not fit into the theoretical rubric; therefore, testing the theory is problematic. The author claims that the book's principal theoretical contribution is to add to an understanding of the “domestic use of international norms by exploring different domestic strategies of normative and institutional compliance” (p. 10). To accomplish this, one has to demonstrate that her cases are examples of both her international pressure archetypes and her domestic political coalition archetypes. For example, Serbia has to look like an example of coercive pressure in contrast to the symbolic pressure exerted on Croatia. Croatia has to look like an instrumental norm adopter in comparison to the norm resisters in Serbia. However, the cases prove to be more overlapping than discrete categories. The carrot-and-stick approach emblematic of her coercive international pressure variable is present repeatedly in the Croatian and Bosnian cases. European Union membership serves as both symbolic pressure on Croatia, and coercive pressure on Serbia. She repeatedly says that Croatia is the example of instrumental norm adoption (p. 120), but makes the same claims about Serbia (p. 119) and then about Bosnia (p. 129). There is no variation on the dependent variable, since hijacked transitional justice is the outcome in all three cases; however, there is maximal variation on the independent variables along three dimensions. Because there are no control cases, it is especially problematic to unravel possible variable impact. The cases look more like thick descriptions of the complex process of implementing transitional justice, rather than portable categories to be used to analyze other postconflict situations.

Fourth, in the literature on transitional justice there is a theorized two-pronged impact of the measures, catalyzing both institutional change and symbolic or normative change. The author minimizes the institutional change component in her analysis, focusing on the lack of an authentic or real assimilation of norms of justice. She acknowledges but minimizes the fact that suspects are arrested and transferred to The Hague for trials, that truth and reconciliation commissions are established, that testimonies and accounts are documented and disseminated, and that there are domestic trials prosecuting war criminals. The fact that there is little popular support for continued transitional justice among Serbs, Croats, or Bosniacs is also minimized by the author. She suggests that these acts and attitudes represent justice that is not “real” or “deep enough” (p. 37). In the end, the reader is left asking two questions: When is postgenocide justice ever sufficiently deep, and deep enough for whom?