Ljiljana Kolarski

Nemanja Džuverović and Věra Stojarová. 2023. Peace and Security in the Western Balkans: A Local Perspective. London: Routledge, p. 309.

The paper analyses the “Open Balkanˮ initiative with the intention of establishing, through a critical discourse analysis, the dominant positions of the countries of the Western Balkans regarding this form of regional cooperation. The authors will show that political discourses towards regional integration are, on the one hand, a product of the internal unfinished process of state and nation-building, while on the other hand, they are a direct consequence of open bilateral issues and the absence of a clear perspective of membership in the European Union. The paper proves that the dominant negative discourse on the “Open Balkansˮ initiative equates regional integration with the fear of losing sovereignty both over internal political processes and on the path of European integration.

Book review: Joseph McQuade. 2021. A Genealogy of Terrorism: Colonial law and the Origins of an Idea. Canbridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 276.