Maja Davidović, "Governing the Past: 'Never Again' and the Transitional Justice Project" (Cambridge UP, 2025)

Summary

---

Podcast Summary:

New Books Network – Eastern European Studies
Guest: Maja Davidović
Book: Governing the Past: "Never Again" and the Transitional Justice Project (Cambridge UP, 2025)
Host: Dragana Pravulovic
Date: December 5, 2025

---

Episode Overview

This episode features an insightful interview with Maja Davidović, a scholar of international relations, discussing her new book, Governing the Past: "Never Again" and the Transitional Justice Project. Centered on post-conflict Bosnia and Herzegovina, the conversation explores the global imperatives of ensuring a peaceful future and dealing with the past through the lens of transitional justice. Davidović critically examines the promises and pitfalls of transitional justice mechanisms and how global interventions intersect with local lived experiences and anxieties about potential conflict recurrence.

---

Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Post-Conflict Bosnia: A Laboratory for Transitional Justice

[02:05–11:07]

• Context: The 1995 Dayton Peace Agreement not only ended the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, but also created an enduring international presence in domestic affairs, notably the Office of the High Commissioner, whose powers have expanded.
• International Experimentation: Bosnia has been a "laboratory" for international approaches to transitional justice, criminal accountability, and state-building. The ICTY (International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia) was pioneering in trying leaders, such as Slobodan Milošević, and set precedents in international criminal law.
• Personal Connection: Davidović’s own upbringing in the former Yugoslavia, combined with an academic path through human rights and genocide studies, informs both her passion and critical stance. "I feel like I have lived transitional justice all of my life or most of my life." [06:49]

---

2. Two Global Imperatives: "Never Again" as Vow and Policy

[11:07–20:17]

• Imperative One: Ensuring a Peaceful Future ("Never Again")
  The phrase has become a near-universal political vow post-World War II, particularly in the wake of the Holocaust.

  "Since the end of World War II, this vow of never again has been made repeatedly." [12:05]

• Imperative Two: Dealing with the Past
  Post-conflict societies are compelled—or pressured—externally and internally, to implement transitional justice measures: criminal trials, truth commissions, institutional reforms, and reparations.
• Causal Linkage: The global doctrine is that proper reckoning with the past will secure a peaceful future. Davidović argues, however, that this "consensus" often glosses over empirical ambiguities and contested lived experiences.

---

3. Central Argument: Transitional Justice and Anxiety

[19:13–21:31]

• Challenging the Benevolence of Transitional Justice: Rather than treating transitional justice as intrinsically good, Davidović interrogates how its structures and demands can fuel, not heal, local anxieties about potential conflict recurrence.

  "The global project of transitional justice can in fact exacerbate people's anxieties about renewed conflict in different political communities." [19:13]

• Focus on Perceptions: The author makes clear she is not predicting conflict, but is interested in how these interventions shape perceptions and insecurities on the ground.

---

4. Ontological Insecurity: Uncertainty in the Wake of Justice

[21:31–29:46]

• Defining Ontological (In)Security: The concept refers to a stable sense of self—individual or collective—versus anxiety when that is threatened. Transitional justice projects, while promising closure, can disrupt communal narratives and identities.

  "The project is there first and foremost to manage some of these uncertainties that characterize transitions as times of significant changes." [24:50]

• Double-Edged Interventions: While transitional justice institutions might create new routines or authoritative knowledge, they can also destabilize national/collective narratives and trigger contestations over identity, memory, and history.

  "It can bring new and aggravated uncertainties with its practices." [28:03]

---

5. The ICTY and the Multiplication of Truths

[29:46–38:48]

• Absence of National Truth Commission: Despite myriad interventions, Bosnia never had a unified national body to investigate and record the causes and consequences of the war. Instead, multiple competing "truths" proliferate.

  "There is no agreement on even the character of the war." [30:45]

• Judicial "Truth" as Disruptive: ICTY’s legal findings, positioned as authoritative and "objective," often clashed with—and even entrenched—revisionist or rival narratives among Serb, Croat, and Bosniak communities.

  "Instead of creating a common political narrative, the global project's emphasis on judicial truths... further [fuels the] creation of not only multiple but also irreconcilable versions of reality." [38:48]

---

6. Hope, Agency, and the "Homework" of Non-Recurrence

[41:24–47:53]

• Homework as Hope: Davidović frames the final chapter not as prescriptive policy, but as an invitation to personal and collective action.

  "Non recurrence is constructed as the form of work rather than some actionable goal that has, you know, expiration date—it's open ended, it's fluid... it depends on all of us. It's our mess." [44:18–47:00]

• Civil Society's Role: Grassroots initiatives—like creating trans-ethnic spaces and fostering empathy—sometimes work regardless of, or even in resistance to, international transitional justice frameworks.
• Reclaiming Ownership: Interventions may have undermined Bosnians’ own sense of agency and authorship of their history, present and future, but waves of civic action, such as recent protests in Serbia, hint at the possibility of regaining that ownership.

---

7. Research Methodology and Fieldwork Reflections

[47:53–53:05]

• Research Approach: Davidović conducted extensive fieldwork, including practitioner interviews, media analysis, and archival research. She highlights the limitations of desk research and the importance of "being there," especially for understanding nuances and personal connections.

  "In person, people are more open to talking about...personal stories and experiences." [49:51]

• Positionality and Challenges: As a Serb working in Bosnia, Davidović expected her nationality to be a barrier—it wasn’t, and sometimes even helped. She shared both the emotional toll and sometimes uncomfortable encounters, like a failed interview with Bosnia’s chief prosecutor.

  "No amount of reading about fieldwork can prepare you for that." [52:40]

---

8. Looking Forward: Future Research

[53:14–54:35]

• Current Projects: Davidović is now pursuing research on knowledge production in international politics, focusing on how we "know" war and the authority of various fact-finding mechanisms across history, with anticipated continued focus on the Balkans.

---

Notable Quotes and Memorable Moments

• On Personal Relationship with Transitional Justice:
  "I feel like I have lived transitional justice all of my life or most of my life." [06:49]
• On the Limits of Transitional Justice:
  "The global project of transitional justice can in fact exacerbate people's anxieties about renewed conflict..." [19:13]
• On Ownership and Agency:
  "All of these outside interventions, transitional justice and otherwise did, is take away people's sense of ownership of their own past and with that, the present and the future." [44:18]
• On the Multiplication of Competing Narratives:
  "For ICTY it was an international armed conflict. For many in Bosnia and Herzegovina it was aggression... For Republika Srpska... a defensive patriotic war. For some... a civil war." [30:45]
• On the Nature of Non-Recurrence:
  "Non recurrence is constructed as the form of work rather than some actionable goal... it's open ended, it's fluid, no completion date, and it relies on other people joining the workforce." [44:18]

---

Detailed Timestamps for Key Segments

• [02:05–11:07] — Setting the scene: post-conflict Bosnia, international interventions, personal motivation
• [11:33–20:17] — "Never Again" as a global imperative, causality, and critiques
• [21:31–29:46] — Ontological security/insecurity, transitional justice and identity
• [29:46–38:48] — The ICTY, lack of unified narrative, competing truths
• [41:24–47:53] — Hope, civic agency, "homework" of non-recurrence
• [47:53–53:05] — Methodology, fieldwork experiences, ethical challenges
• [53:14–54:35] — Future research directions

---

Tone and Style

The conversation is rigorously academic yet deeply personal and humane. Davidović blends personal narrative, scholarly critique, and practical insights, offering both sober analysis and hopeful perspectives.

---

Conclusion

This episode is a rich exploration of the promises and paradoxes at the heart of the transitional justice project, particularly as they manifest in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Davidović’s book, and this interview, challenge listeners to reconsider how we "govern the past," the psychological and social costs of global interventions, and the ongoing, collective work required to truly move toward "never again."

---

Transcript

[A]

Limu Emu. And Doug, here we have the Limu Emu in its natural habitat, helping people customize their car insurance and save hundreds with Liberty Mutual.

[B]

Fascinating.

[C]

It's accompanied by his natural ally, Doug.

[B]

Uh, Limu is that guy with the binoculars watching us?

[A]

Cut the camera.

[D]

They see us.

[A]

Only pay for what you [e-mail] Liberty Liberty Liberty Liberty Savings vary unwritten by Liberty Mutual Insurance Company and affiliates. Excludes Massachusetts.

[B]

Welcome to Walgreens.

[D]

What can I help you with today?

[A]

Hi, I need a last minute gift for a secret Santa. Something thoughtful, impressive. Not a fruitcake.

[D]

We've got Ferrero chocolates, artisan coffees, even a spa kit.

[B]

Any vibe you're going for?

[A]

Whatever says wow. This guy's great at giving gifts.

[D]

How about this premium skincare gift set?

[B]

Just needs a bow. Will look like you planned it weeks ago.

[A]

Well, happy holidays. Gifts, holiday decor and more. The holiday road is long. We're with you all the way. Walgreens. Dick's deal days start Sunday. Enjoy four days of epic deals online and in the App Score. Exclusive scorecard and app only offers. Plus one day deals on Nike, Adidas and more. Can't wait. Shop now@Dick's.com or in the Dick's app for Cyber Week deals. Every holiday starts at Dick's.

[C]

Welcome to the New Books Network.

[D]

Hello and welcome to New Books in Eastern European Studies, a channel of the New Books Network. My name is Dragana Pravulovic and today I'm speaking with Maja Davidovic, a scholar of international relations, about her new book which came out in 2025 at Cambridge University Press. The title is Governing the Past, Never Again and the Transitional Justice Project. So Maya, thank you for being on the show today.

[B]

Thank you for having me on the podcast.

[D]

So by way of introduction, I'd love it if you could help situate listeners in the post conflict Bosnia and Herzegovina context and in doing so also tell us a little bit about yourself. So what led you to do the research on this topic?

[B]

Sure. So we are recording this episode exactly, almost exactly 30 years after the signing of the Dayton Peace Agreement, the General Framework Agreement for Peace that's commonly referred to as Dayton Peace Agreement, which as listeners might already know, formally concluded the war in Bosnia Herzegovina, which lasted from 1992 to 1995. And this peace agreement set out a new constitution of the country, legally confirming the country's territorial integrity and also political independence, establishing a range of security guarantees.

And also carved a path for continuous international kind of third party monitoring and active involvement in domestic affairs of this country. And these are ongoing to date, perhaps to give the listeners an example of what this means, and this is often quite surprising to learn, Perhaps the starkest form of disinvolvement, which again is still present, never ceases to exist, is the office of the High Commissioner. So in the peace agreement, this was envisaged as a kind of ad hoc international institution to oversee the implementation of the civilian aspects of the agreement until the country is able to take full responsibility for its own affairs. But fast forward to today, the offices is still there, and this mandate has only expanded really over the years to include lawmaking powers. So for me, to paint the best picture of post conflict Bosnia Herzegovina is mainly to ask the listeners to imagine a kind of a laboratory with different ideas being tested and tried out. It's definitely one of the countries which, since 1995, has received most interest of the international community. It has had one of the most developed infrastructures concerning not only transitional justice, which is what the book is about, but also state building, peace building, and so on. And this is seen through many processes, projects, other practices that really have included a wide range of international actors, organizations, states, regional actors, and so forth. It was also, and this is why I say laboratory, it was also the first one to go through some of these processes that are now quite the norm. And most notably, this concerns international criminal justice. So in 1993, while the war is still ongoing, the United Nations Security Council establishes an ad hoc international criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. And this was the first one of its kind, later another one for Rwanda, and very monumental. It has achieved many milestones in international criminal law, including issuing an indictment for a sitting head of state at that time, Slobodan Milosevic, who died before the trial, was completed genocide judgments as well. And so since then, across the world, we have seen a lot of hybrid criminal tribunals in post conflict states. And of course, we have a permanent international criminal court which might not have existed without the ICTY. So in these 30 years since the Dayton peace agreement, Bosnia has had just so much investment by international actors in the processes of justice, democratization, reconstruction, and then most forcefully in the areas of criminal justice and also institutional legal reform. So passing new laws, vetting officials of state institutions, that sort of thing. So I hope that paints a picture of where we are or where we have been in Bosnia in the past 30 years. Now, how do I come into all of this? What led me to this project? I think it would be impossible for me to answer this question without really giving A little bit more context about, you know, where, where I grew up, where I'm from.

I feel like I have lived transitional justice all of my life or most of my life. So I was born in Serbia, then Yugoslavia, just a few months before the war in Bosnia started. And transition from socialism to democracy, from war to peace, sort of in Serbia started a little bit later than in Bosnia, in the sense that.

The regime of Slobodan Milosevic was still in power until 2000. And it looked a little bit different, but of course.

The International Criminal Tribunal was very prominent. I remember coming from school and seeing trial on tv, figuring out what's going on. And there was always a sense of.

Just not Talking about the 90s, don't ask about the 90s in the family, in the school.

During my formative years. And I would say in my path to, well, becoming an academic, but more importantly, I think to. To becoming interested in this field is kind of very common for human rights activists who are my age or younger in the region, in the sense that we were good students, maybe are quite active. And then at some point we were kind of dragged into certain summer schools or seminars or workshops organized by different NGOs who were kind of helping with this transition, this democratization. And that's where I learned about the Srebrenica genocide for the first time. Nobody talked about this at home. And I remember asking in school then some more information. It was just kind of shushed about that. So one thing led to another. I studied international relations and became interested in genocide studies. During that time I went to Sare before a summer school where I discovered transitional justice. And that became my obsession again, mostly through international criminal justice, but then also later reparations, which I explored more within my human rights master's degree. So my interest in dealing with the past remained constant since my student years, because it felt so personal, because it felt that this transitional justice is in my family, in my relationships. It kind of constructs where I travel, how I travel, who sits in our parliament, and everything. Academically, the more I read about transitional justice, the more I understood that some of the very basic questions about what or how something works were left neglected. So in the literature, I'm sure listeners who are familiar with transitional justice would know, and also at the level of policy, there's often talks about these four pillars of transitional justice. So criminal justice is one, but there's also truth, recovery, reparations, and something called guarantees of non recurrence. So that fourth pillar for me looked particularly under defined. I mean, what if anything in the world could guarantee that mass atrocities or even conflict itself would not be repeated. And again, in a region where I'm growing up and there's really constant threats about, you know, resurgence of conflict.

Different sources propose that the secret might lie in these institutional and legal reforms, you know, on the basis of kind of cleansing the institutions from rotten apples and drawing the line between the old and the new. And then that improves people's trust in these new, transparent, improved, impartial institutions. But there was very little empirical evidence. It did not quite match my lived experience. So what does that conflict nor recurrence look like in the everyday? That was the starting point of my PhD research at Durham University in 2018, merging my personal and professional interests.

[D]

Effy, thank you so much for this introduction. So at the onset of your book, you outline two global imperatives, so ensuring a peaceful future and dealing with the past. Can you tell us more about these imperatives and their relationship in regard to each other? And maybe through this you can also tell us about the main argument of the book, which I think puts into words what many people on the ground in Bosnia and Herzegona have been experiencing for decades.

[B]

Yeah. So I'm sure that most, if not all listeners have heard this exclamation never again being uttered by a politician somewhere as some kind of a vow, a promise. Or maybe they have seen the words written somewhere on a memorial. This is what I mean by the imperative of ensuring a peaceful future. I mean, since the end of World War II to this vow of never again has been made repeatedly.

And most notably in relation to the Holocaust. But not only the famous phrase also appears on a genocide and atrocity related memorials across the world, from Rwanda, Poland, of course, Bosniagovina as well in Srebrenica. There's something similar.

And beyond mere symbolism, this is a vow that requires action. So this very idea of assuring non recurrence of something, of some incident, that's not new at all. I mean, the earliest reference I could find, which doesn't mean it's the earliest reference, but the one that came up in my research is from 1708, Diplomatic Privileges act in Britain that's kind of passed to prevent recurrence of incidents in which foreign ambassadors are physically injured. And, and this is a response, a diplomatic response after a specific incident concerning the Russian ambassador at that time in Britain. However, after World War II, this idea of non recurrence, I think, gains a new dimension at the level of international policy. Not only specific incidents, specific injuries, but mass atrocities, more Broadly are positioned as a key threat to international security. I know that sounds obvious now, but it really wasn't the case before. So preventing their occurrence, preventing that they happen, and also repetition is seemingly a global imperative. So then, in post conflict contexts, how can mass atrocities be stopped from recurring? Much has changed since 1945. And the world has witnessed a lot of developments in international law and policy. Not only international criminal law, which I already mentioned, but a human rights law as well. And so new regulatory models for doing this have been developed. And I think one of the most prominent ones for again post conflict states has been transitional justice. As a set of tools, mechanisms, practices that states transitioning from conflict and or authoritarianism, they're advised or even conditioned to implement, to deal, quote, unquote, deal with their problematic pasts and all of this for more sustainable future. So I already gave the listeners an idea of what that looked like in Bosnia. But transitional justice has been well Traveled since the 1980s, more so into 2000s, from Argentina, Rwanda, Cambodia, Tunisia, Syria, you name it. States and societies operating in very diverse context, I think that that's really important, have embraced the combination of kind of core transitional justice mechanisms, which include criminal trials, but also truth commissions, vetting, reparations and so on.

If we look at ongoing conflicts in places like Ukraine, where talks about establishing a special hybrid tribunal that have been ongoing since the start of the war, basically, it's very difficult for us then to imagine that any transition out of conflict could be possible without some form of transitional justice. There is of course an understanding, scholars, practitioners, that not all measures would work in all contexts. But there is still a consensus that some transitional justice is better than none, that transitioning to states and societies will need to embrace some combination of these measures. The question is only which ones. This is the imperative of dealing with the past. Now the link between the two imperatives is a causal one.

In paradigmatic cases.

To which transitional justice has traveled. And when I say paradigmatic, I mean cases of post conflict, post authoritarian, not cases. For example.

You are in Canada currently, so not cases where there have been historical injustices, where there could be some truth commission, for example, but there isn't an active transition.

So in these paradigmatic cases, ensuring non recurrence really is the organizing telos of transitional justice. Transitional justice exists, among other things, to put this never again promise to practice. Because if perpetrators have been prosecuted, if the truth has been recovered, if the harms have been repaired, institutions have been reformed, then the status quo which led to the violation in the first place, these enabling Conditions, they have been altered. So now we have, that's the idea, a different society where these violations would not at least should not be feasible. So every single of these tools of transitional justice that I mentioned has been claimed to have a potential to contribute positively to non recurrence. At the same time, each of these tools has also been, it's been debated and challenged kind of context based situations, whether it actually is positive or not. So for example, truth recovery or truth and reconciliation commissions, when we look at empirical evidence, it could be the case that they improve interpersonal relations, healing, they bring a closure. But also constructing a coherent narrative in a form of a report is a political act. It can be an exercise of control. So you know whose testimony matters, whose testimony the money doesn't, all of that. So there's both sides. Nevertheless, despite of all of this, there is still a consensus that some transitional justice is better, on balance, for non recurrence. Now, what I do in the book is really question this. I don't treat transitional justice as a benevolent force of global governance, at least not a priori. And instead of looking at these individual tools, mechanisms, truth commissions, tribunals, to better understand what works, I instead kind of try to understand how the way we govern the past, how the way we deal with the past as a matter of global governance, how that impacts people's perceptions of never again.

And ultimately I propose a provocation, I think, and that is that the global project of transitional justice can in fact exacerbate people's anxieties about renewed conflict in different political communities. And this is the core argument which rests on conceptualizing transitional justice again, as a structure. Not looking at it piecemeal, but a big picture. As a structure or global governance that has specific set of characteristics, it has needs for legitimacy, for relevance and survival, ultimately as a kind of global neoliberal project, because that's what it is. Now, I have to just give here a little caveat. I think it's very important for listeners to know that I'm not actually trying to predict whether there will be another conflict in former Yugoslavia. That's not the point. It's not something I can comment on or nor do I wish to. So instead I'm interested in people's perceptions, yeah. Of this being likely or not.

[D]

Like, excellent, thank you for explaining that so well.

[C]

The holidays have a way of sneaking up on you. And I can tell you they snuck up on me. This year I have people coming and I need to buy those people gifts. Or as I say, I just didn't have Everything I need. So what I did is I went to Wayfair. From bedding to linens to decor for every room in the house, Wayfair is your one stop shop, last minute guest prep. Wayfair has you covered. You can refresh bedding and throw pillows and accent chairs for way less. That's what I did. Pretty much all the bedding in my house is threadbare, so I decided to replace it. I went to Wayfair and I ordered some new sheets and pillowcases and I got a comforter which was really cool. I ordered it, the price was great, the shipping was free. It arrived and now I am ready for the hoards to descend upon me. And it's not just bedding, of course. You can get linens and towels and, and things for the kids room, kitchen essentials, things for your living room. And of course they have holiday gifts. So get your last minute hosting essentials, gifts for all your loved ones and decor to celebrate the holidays for way less. Head to Wayfair.com right now to shop all things home. That's W A Y-F-A-I R.com Wayfair Every style, every home.

[D]

I was really pleased to see the concept of ontological insecurity featuring so prominently in your book. So can you tell our listeners more about the concept? What does it mean to be ontologically insecure or secure, as well as how it relates to the transitional justice project?

[B]

Yes, thank you. Ontological security was not something I had in mind when I started the research, so you could say that I was also pleasantly surprised at some point. The concept really emerged organically from my field work in Bosnia Herzegovina in 2019 and 2020, just before COVID lockdowns. And this field work was with all sorts of practitioners in the justice and kind of peace and justice sector, from state institutions, NGOs to very kind of grassroots activists. So at first there was a very prominent theme of anxiety. I started with the question of, you know, what does non recurrence mean to you? Or what it looks like in practice, only to receive so many responses about how there are actually no assurances, no guarantees, despite all the legal institutional reforms, all the vetting, all the packages of measures that have been implemented. So saying things like, oh, if we don't do this, then the only logical thing is repetition, or talking about the next war as being inevitable. Right. The question is only when. And again, this is separate from whether there actually will ever be armed conflict. It's about people's anxieties, that kind of emerge in people's framing of their own experiences, an understanding of this never again anxiety as a mood sort of which is discursively manifested. So then the next step was to identify in relation to what situations or practices or even actors this mood was expressed, what, if anything, transitional justice project has to do with that. And doing that made me really re evaluate what transitional justice as a global project is for. When we look at the historical context in which transitional justice blossoms as a project, we talk a lot about neoliberalism, rule of law, good governance, the end of the Cold War, collapse of authoritarian socialist regimes across the world. But what that really did, I think, is brought a lot of uncertainty about what the world would look like in a seemingly no longer bipolar climate. And so then those institutions and principles, such as the rule of law and good governance, they were part of a response to such seemingly unsettling uncertainty and creating a new world order. But I think Danbad makes us, or leads us to conclude that in addition to seeking to achieve these certain values as if they were ever fully completed, truth, reconciliation, justice, and this is what most scholarship focuses on. I think the project is there. The Transitional justice project is there first and foremost to manage some of these uncertainties that characterize transitions as times of significant changes. Absolutely significant changes in all spheres, political, legal, economic, social landscape. And it does so by promising to address grievances, facilitating justice, truth, recovery, repair, all for long lasting, never again. It gives promises. Yeah, and promises can be very soothing for anxiety. So the idea is that the project seeks to support structures which can, during the transition, reestablish some sense of normality, some sense of routine, a new routine for political communities.

Now this brings transitional injustice into the sphere of not only physical securities, but also ontological securities and insecurities. Now, for any listeners who kind of study, do work on international relations, studies of ontological insecurity are so popular these days. But then maybe for those who are in kind of in sociology or psychology, we know that the origin of that concept lies somewhere else. It wasn't meant initially for states, it's meant for individuals. Right. So it's rooted in kind of psychoanalysis. Maybe the most straightforward way to explain it is.

As a continuous, secure sense of self, having a secure sense of self of who we are in the world, how we move about the world. And both individuals and collectives, for example, where we get our sense of identity or belonging, have those ontological needs to fulfill them. And this is again simplifying things, but to fulfill them, most favor routine, stable relationships with others. Uncertainty. Uncertainty, on the other hand, is triggered when routines and routinized relationships are ruptured in a situation that that person or that collective perceives to be critical.

There's work that suggests that for some actors, actually conflict can be quite, quite soothing. Right. So it's not always so black or white.

So the Transitional justice project, of course, has the capacity to serve as an anxiety controlling mechanism to help with these uncertainties. As I said already, it makes promises, you know, collects kind of establishes authoritative information. But it can also establish or secure roles, positions, hierarchies. But it can, of course, rupture routines of very different collective actors. Individual actors as well. It can bring new and aggravated uncertainties with its practices.

It puts this external pressure on communities, memory making, history making, and with that, on their collective identities. It comes with a set of normative commitments that challenge, let's say, the state or any political. I mean, Bosnia is more complicated, of course, because it's a federation. So a political entity's sense of self or a nation's sense of self. Think about how national identities rest in political memories. And these memories are very carefully curated. Select these events, select some victories, triumphs, myths, symbols. You create narratives to make sense of a crisis. This is when we were really strong. This is when we were the victim, to make sense of what happened. Yeah. So while now transitional justice institutions enter the picture, there are these other authorities, such as courts and truth commissions, that are also curating those events and setbacks and triumphs that are pertaining to one's national or other collective identity.

So.

This is where the research led me, as I said, kind of organically, to see.

That actually transitional justice as a project is very much shaping and putting pressure on ontological securities beyond what might it actually do for actual kind of physical. Physical security as well.

[D]

Excellent. Thank you for that. I was fascinated by the empirical section of the book. So chapter four, five and six, which analyzed the lived experiences of Never Again in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Can you tell our listeners more about how the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, instead of producing a quote unquote, objective truth, has fueled the spread of multiple and competing and often entirely revisionist narratives about the war and what are the consequences of that?

[B]

Yes. Thank you. So the first of those of those three chapters, as you allude, is about truth recovery. And listeners might be intrigued to learn that in the sea of intervention that Bosnia went through since 1995, there has been no truth or fact finding commission at the national level that would investigate the causes, dynamics, consequences of the war.

Which which is quite, quite baffling, right? Seeing that the truth, truth recovery is one of the key pillars of transitional justice. So what that means in actual terms is that there is no agreement on even the character of the war. So for ICTY it was an international armed conflict. For many in Bosnia and Herzegovina it was aggression on Bosnia Herzegovina. But for Republika Srpska, which is the majority Serb entity in the Federation of Bosnia Herzegovina, it was a defensive patriotic war. For some on the outside, it might have looked like a civil war. So there exist different state funded research centers. So at the level of Federation of Bosnia Herzegovina, which is again the other entity, and at the level of Republika Srpska, and they have expensive fact finding mandates in relation to war, but they produce completely contrary findings about qualifications of certain crimes in relation to each other and in relation to the icty. And of course they react to one another. The more revisionism there is on one side, I feel like the more revisionism there is on the other side. Now, this lack of a public, even public discussion really about the competing narratives.

Gives people anxiety about potential conflict repetition. I think actually that was maybe the most common response and the most common worry was about the narrative not having common narrative. The concern is that without a dialogue, some negotiated narrative about the war, at least about its qualification and character, it, if not the numbers, if not roles, then the future generations who don't have the lived experience of war, that they might fall into the traps of this kind of ethnic based, victimhood oriented discourse that these alternative producers of truth nurture and that that will make them resort to fighting again, that is kind of the worry. The roots of these practices of revisionism, of course predates transitional justice processes. That's also important to mention. So what does transitional justice have to do with it? If anything, this is what I was interested in. So instead of a statewide national level truth recovery process, the ICTY was given the authority to shape the historical record about the war. Better said, the ICTY created this rule for itself as it undertook a wide range of social values that otherwise would not have been prescribed to courts.

Primary role of a court, at least initially in this case, was to adjudicate our individual criminal response responsibility. But already 1998, the ICTY undertakes the task of writing this alternative history of the region and to kind of elevate itself above the quote, unquote, messy domestic political wranglings and subjective accounts. So giving one that's neutral and objective and then that's the basis for long term reconciliation. Now, this superiority of the ICTY as a producer of historical record meant that other competing producers could only ever be inferior to it. And the most prominent initiative, and a great example of this, was to establish a national level truth commission in late 1990s. And I'm really thankful here to Jas and Dragovich Soso, who wrote about this initiative, you know, 10 years ago.

So this initiative to establish a national level truth commission was not supported by the ICTY initially. So the ICTY actually opposed there being a truth commission in the late 90s because it believed that it would undermine the ICTY's investigation and decision making. For context, at that time, the ICTY is kind of going through place, publicity crisis, right? It's facing a lot of criticism. It's worried about world public opinion and its own legitimacy and effectiveness. And I wrote about this separately in a paper. So in response, it took up the task of not only writing the history of the conflict, but also educating people about it. And it established an outreach office in 1998. This was the first office of such type. And it would go on to educate thousands of school children around the country about ICTY's historical record. Eventually, the ICTY indicated that the TRC, the Truth Commission, could go forward, but in a very limited.

Setting, right? It would not have any real investigative powers. It couldn't do anything that would infringe the activities of the prosecutor. So the mandate would kind of be cosmetic. And nothing really ever came out of this initiative. There were, of course, other factors influencing this.

So without going into maybe too much detail about how judicial process works and, and therefore what judicial truths can and cannot do, the main point here is, when presented as most authoritative, objective source of truth.

These records from the ICTY can of course be a source of security and recognition for a lot of individuals, but they can also be sources of ontological insecurity for or political communities.

So different political actors rely on their own kind of stories about how certain historical events unfolded, as we already explained.

And they promote that specific version of their past and desired future. And these are all essential for ontological security.

Political community's ontological security can then be shaken when its biographical narrative is subject to rupture or inconsistency. So history writing and rewriting in particular would normally be reserved to nation states, as we said.

And for Boston Herzegovina, if we think about the country as a whole, the most significant episode.

Of its history as an independent country was. Was in a large part going to be written by someone else who kind of drew the line between the past and the present the guilty and the innocent, and to fully accept and internalize an international tribunal's qualification of the conflict of the actors and consequences really requires then an interrogation of one's sense of self, identity and position in the world. These judicial truths that come out of the icdy, they now need to be situated within political communities.

Bosnia, Serb, Groat, all of them. And they're already pre existing biographies. So this has involved revision, classification, trivialization, minimization, all of that.

Not even the Bosniak political community, which is the most clearly the victimized community or the most clearly victimized community, sticks faithfully to ICTY's qualifications.

So instead of creating a common political narrative, I think the global project's emphasis on judicial truths as the prioritized sources of knowledge further creation of not only multiple but also irreconcilable versions of reality. And in the book I give examples of of two research institutions, one in Republika Srpska, one in the Federation of Bosnia Czegovina, that some deny, some challenge or expand on ICTY judgments to either create new myths about victimhood and suffering, or to remystify some of the old ones and to really polish these Bosniak and Serb autobiographies after crisis while interacting with the ICTY records in distinct, completely parallel ways to ensure continuity of their collective sense of self. So then, these multiple truths, as I said at the beginning, really fuel people's anxieties and concerns about the future. In the time it takes us to say we're using Folger's instant coffee, seamlessly blended with water and ice, a splash of whatever kind of milk is your thing. And gotta get that caramel drizzle, all to make a toasty roasty caramel iced coffee. You could be enjoying it, every damn sip of it. Damn right, it's Folger's Instant.

[D]

And now a message from McAfee.

[B]

Your package couldn't be delivered.

[A]

You owe thousands in unpaid tolls.

[B]

You won a free gift.

[D]

If texts like these sound familiar, McAfee can help. McAfee automatically identifies text and email scams, as well as AI generated audio to help you stay safe. If they're faking it, they're not making it past us. Get award winning science scam detection today.

[A]

McAfee.com KeepItReal.

This episode is brought to you by Pacifico. Here's a story you've probably never heard. Legend has it, decades ago, a couple surfers went down to Mexico in search of epic swells. But they found something unexpected instead. It was still crisp, lively and smooth. But it had nothing to do with waves. It was Pacifico, a delicious Mexican lager. It's like it was brewed to be discovered. Pacifico. Find your own way. 21 Discover Responsibly Pacifico Clara Beer imported.

[D]

By Crown Import, Chicago, IL thank you for your answer. So you characterize the final chapter of your book as hopeful while also characterizing non recurrence as homework or a self assignment. Can you tell our listeners more about this?

[B]

Yeah, I guess I give my readers homework.

In a way. No. The claims that I so the one about truth, reflection, recovery that we just discussed and then other claims and the other two empirical chapters that concern history, education, but also glorification of war criminals that's rampant in not just in Bosnia and Herzegovina, but also in neighboring countries. These claims put me in a really kind of in a critical position role towards Transitional Justice. They do a lot of extra explaining of why transitional justice as a project might worsen things for post conflict societies, but they don't offer much as to what to do with that. Yeah. So what to do with that anxiety, for example, because in in theory, anxiety is not only and always paralyzing for action.

[D]

Yeah.

[B]

It can actually open space for creative action when things.

So chapter seven then in that sense is hopeful because it explores how these different practitioners that I studied who may in fact experience anxiety about potential renewed conflict, how they contribute to prevention of the same conflict day in and day out in connection to transitional justice, but also in fact perhaps in this connection to the global project of transitional justice, some practitioners work with and beyond it. Obviously there's a lot of work.

Engaging in the practices of truth recovery beyond what the ICTY has said, because of course the ICTY couldn't have ever possibly covered everything. So it's this work is appreciative of the fact finding capabilities of the ICTY and other domestic courts, but it's also critical of its claimed values of objectivity, neutrality and completeness. So civil society sector has done wonderful work collecting testimonies, evidence stories.

Other work on and for non recurrence might actually go despite or even against transitional justice. It acknowledges this possibility. That transitional justice project perhaps does more harm than good.

Asks, you know, what if instead we spent so much time, so many resources trying to reestablish our trust towards the state, we sought to reestablish trust among people first and foremost. So in the book there's many examples of what that looks like in practice, working on creating trans ethnic spaces, which sometimes feels like there aren't that many in Bosniagovina working on building empathy, care for the other and different. And so in that chapter, looking at what sort of practices people find meaningful for never again shows us that the scope, if we go back to the two global imperatives, it shows us that the scope of the imperative to prevent renewed conflict is much broader than the scope of the project of transitional justice or dealing with the past. Of course it is. Of course this should not come as a surprise, I don't think, because yes, legal and institutional remains, reforms can be important, but there's so much more. I think one of the most tragic things for me as someone who is from former Yugoslavia, that all of these outside interventions, transitional justice and otherwise did, is take away people's sense of ownership of their own past and with that, the present and the future. So in this hopeful chapter, when I look at what practitioners do to, in their views, contribute to non recurrence, it's not to achieve outputs, it's a process. It's not outcome driven, it's to create, to enhance skills, connections, experiences. And so in that sense, non recurrence is constructed as the form of work rather than some actionable goal that has, you know, expiration date, it's open ended, it's fluid, no completion date, and it relies on other people joining the workforce. It's messy, yeah, of course it's hard, but it's our mess. It depends on all of us. It concerns all of us. It's not stress free, it's not contestation free, maybe not even necessarily a peaceful form of work, but I really think it's a, a way for us to reclaim ownership over their, over our own pasts and remake our societies.

And I had submitted the book before.

The student led protest in Serbia started, so I didn't have time to reflect on that. But what has been happening in Serbia for the past year, more than a year now, and I urge our listeners to read more about this. If they haven't, if they're not aware, that really speaks to that issue of ownership. I really feel like the protests have mobilized people from all parts of the country, geographical, but also political and economic.

Pockets of the country, to feel like they are agents them of their own present and future and of course past.

[D]

Thank you so much. That was really well said and I'm really glad you brought up the protests. So as an ethnographer, I'm always really fascinated by the methodological strategies and challenges that researchers face when on the ground. And your own research also included extensive interviews with practitioners, practitioners working in transitional justice in Bosnia and herzegomena but also media analysis and archival research. Can you tell us more about why you selected this methodological approach and what were your main challenges?

[B]

Yeah, why this approach? I think it just fit what I wanted to do initially at the start of my PhD project. You know, I was coming fresh from a human rights law degree, so I was really trying to do something that was more international law than it ended up being. But in any case, I was interested in connections and disconnections between the law and policy and non recurrence in the actual practice. Yeah. And so if I had done this by doing desk research only, I doubt I would have arrived at the conclusions that I make in this book, particularly by focusing on practitioners. I think often on paper, with NGOs in particular, there's a lot of copy paste and using keywords that funders want to see and kind of replicating these international frameworks, guidelines and so on. And fair enough. In person, people are more open to talking about not just the failures of Transitional justice, what wasn't there and why, but also personal stories. People are a lot more willing to share their personal stories and experiences. For example, chapter six starts with the story of someone I interviewed who told me that they had recently found out that their landlord and a friend was a war criminal. Because it was in the news. Yeah. So it's an anecdote, but it actually really gave me a broad and I would argue, comprehensive understanding of what's going on.

For the challenges. I remember anticipating a lot more challenges than I ended up having. So, just for context, I spent about four months in Sarajevo for this specific book. And before the trip I was really aware of my positionality. On the one hand, I knew the context, I knew the language, I traveled, I was from the region, but I was also from Serbia. Right. And Serbia, it's done terribly to deal with the past. To date, the Srebrenica genocide is denied by our political leadership, and now more aggressively so than before. I think more resources now are spent on denial than before. So I think I anticipated that my ethnicity or my nationality would be a barrier in some places, but this wasn't the case. I think this was quite inexperienced thinking. If anything, I think people were quite pleasantly surprised to learn about my background and including in places such as Rabrenica, where not many people with Serbian passport go.

I'm talking about the Memorial center, not the town.

At the same time, my nationality might have given me access to some institutions in Republika, Srpska. I can only guess we'll never know. For sure, but I can assume so. So not to romanticize feel word because of course there were some low moments, you know, arrangements fall through, contacts ignore you. Oh, transcription just takes so, so much of your energy. I remember wake, I was obsessed with it. So I would wake up at 5am not being able to sleep, and then half asleep, just type, listen and type. And it can all be very lonely. I mean, my worst interview, I don't think I actually ever shared this, but I don't see why not. My worst interview or attempt in an interview, so it's not in the book because there wasn't an actual conversation, was with the chief prosecutor at that time. So yeah, I was, I think shocked as anyone that they agreed to meet me. And they greeted me like some sort of honorary guest at first, some sort of celebrity. I think they thought, I don't know, the ICTY sent me or somebody sent me. So it was something very bizarre. But they kind of, you know, greeted me in a very fascinating way. And then when they learned who I was and what my research was about, they ended up kind of mocking me and my questions and my research and they ended the conversation without giving me an interview. So no amount of reading about fieldwork can prepare you for that.

Because it felt quite, quite personal. Of course it wasn't. And now upon reflection and knowing what has happened in that office and to that specific person, I think the incident again helped me figure out some things about how certain institutions work. And I can laugh about it now, but this is me six years later being able to share.

[D]

Thank you. That's super interesting. So we've taken up a lot of your time, so I'd like to ask you a final question, which is what are you working on now?

[B]

Now it's a really exciting time for me, partly because I'm on research leave after four months of intense teaching. And this has been really productive, but also partly because the book is out. I finished a smaller project that I had focusing specifically in Serbia's genocide denial. And now I'm in this kind of beautiful in between period of preparing for my next big, big thing. So I will be tapping into my interests in knowledge production, which I think come out as obvious in the book as well. And you know, how we know what we know and what counts as authoritative knowledge and what doesn't. With two projects. One asks how we know war by focusing on international fact finding commission since the late 19th century. And surprise, surprise, the Balkans, of course, play such a prominent role in that as well. And the Balkan wars. And then the other asks how we can know war otherwise. So looking for traces of epistemic disobedience in global politics, which I'm really excited about.

[D]

That's really exciting and I look forward to reading your future work. Thank you so much for being on the show today.

[B]

Thank you, Dragan. I really enjoyed our conversation.

[D]

So that was Maya Davidovic talking to us about her new book out from Cambridge University Press, 2025 Governing the Past, Never Again and the Transitional Justice Project.

[B]

Thank you for listening.

[D]

Join Vanguard for a moment of meditation.

[B]

Take a deep breath.

[D]

Picture yourself reaching your financial goals. Feel that freedom. Visit Vanguard com investinginu to learn more. All investing is subject to risk.