COMPSEES 73/2 Out Now

Comparative Southeast European Studies 73, no. 2, 2025, is available in open access.

Two contributions run under the header of this year's annual theme "The Yugoslav Wars and the Year 1995: Reflections. Resilience. Reverberations":

Christian Methfessel (Munich) investigated newly accessible documents at the British Foreign office and sheds new light on the process of recognition of Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Benjamin Nurkić (Tuzla) and Edin Skrebo (Milan) reflect on the repercussions a recent decision of the European Court of Human Rights might have on the rulings of the Constitutional Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina, concerning that country's constitutional identity. In the light of current events around Mr. Dodik, their argument only gains in relevance.

In addition, the issue features three worthwhile articles:

Iva Kosmos (Ljubljana) and Tanja Petrović (Ljubljana) present their ethnography of former workers in the Yugoslav/Croatian fish-canning industry and identify the topoi of modernization, mobility and women's emancipation to be central to socialist industrialization and, significantly, in decisive contrast with habitual perceptions of (capitalist) factory work as mundane and meaningless.

Drini Imami (Tirana) and Abel Polese (Dublin) look at elections in Albania, Kosovo, and North Macedonia to expand and complicate the definition of corruption to include not only the abuse of public functions, but also clientelism and forbearance.

The Open Section carries the header "The Making of Historical Knowledge and Public History":
Federico Tenca Montini (Koper) and Sabine Rutar (Regensburg) present the ERC project Open Borders, and especially the exhibition the project team recently launched as part of the European Capital of Culture Programme in Nova Gorica/Gorizia.