genocide against Azeris by Armenians’ in today’s official Azerbaijani propaganda (p. 134). One of the problematic elements in Nested Nationalism is the description of the escalation of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Goff writes that in November 1987, ‘the first train arrived in Baku carrying Azeris fleeing interethnic violence in Armenia’ (p. 221) without providing any reference. The problem with this assertion is that there was no interethnic violence in Armenia at the height of Gorbachev’s perestroika. Narratives that ethnic Azeris were forced out of Armenia date from the early 1990s, years after the conflict started in February 1988. The book is richly documented, using both oral history—with some 120 interviews—and archival material. Carrying out academic research in Azerbaijan comes with numerous difficulties, as the author narrates how in one instance an ‘archive director denounced me as a separatist in front of archival staff’ and, elsewhere, how ‘it was not possible for me to order files about Armenians while conducting research in Azerbaijani archives’ (p. 10).

Cold War, mentioning several important events such as the Cuban missile crisis, the Soviet leadership’s anti-Western campaigns and the erection of the Berlin Wall. The case of the spy in question is an important one. His trial and verdict served as a precedent for other legal cases, some involving Nazi party members, as the Soviet government was found to have the main responsibility for the assassinations, while the agent was merely seen as an accessory to murder. In addition to the legal implications of the case, the agent’s confessions about the Soviet secret missions deeply affected Western views of the Soviet Union and attitudes towards the d etente era. Both books are highly recommended to those who are interested in the question of how postcommunist societies deal with their own past. ‘Collaborator’ may hold a pejorative meaning in many languages but the authors of the books under review do not fall prey to lazy oversimplifications in discussing ‘collaborators’ and their deeds. They carefully emphasise the political and social structure that shaped individual and collective agency, raising important questions about motivations for collaboration and transitional justice in the post-Cold War era.

Both constitutionalism and populism share the concept of “the people” as their central category of reference. Even if their inherent ideas and values are contradictory, questions can be raised whether is it possible for them to function simultaneously in some political systems, namely those belonging to countries in “third wave” of democratic transformation? By focusing on former Yugoslavia countries and context of “post-Yugoslavia” as a region understood in terms of its post-socialist transformations, paper approaches its recent political history in terms of continuous populism, arguing that it played and still plays integral role in shaping democratic and liberal economy transition. While national and intra- regional politics of post-Yugoslavia revolves around issues of nation, identity and history, giving rise to populism (political parties, practices and discourses), question remains what role does constitutionalism plays in it and how does it relate to populism? On a more general level, paper treats both populism and constitutionalism in their functional relation of economic transformation, pawing way for neoliberal economic policies. This results in populist democracies and “ethnocracies” as manifestations of continuous populism. Since both populism and constitutionalism have important relation to institutions, this will be analyzed through public trust in institutions measurement in post-Yugoslavia, relying on existing data. On a more specific level, paper examines interrelation of populism and constitutionalism in terms of national identity and treatment of minorities in legal and political aspects. In this regard, paper focuses on constitutional court decisions on minority rights and its enforcement in comparative perspective between Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Legal professions are undergoing deep changes in contemporary Croatia, Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina affected by the processes of postsocialist transformation and globalization. They range from changes of the social status and professional independence of judges and prosecutors to new market conditions in which lawyers (attorneys) are practicing law. The impact of these was a subject of a regional research dealing with social status and internal stratification of legal professions. The research was carried out in Croatia, Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina in the first half of 2018. The survey was conducted by using a combination of online questionnaires and face- to-face interviews on a sample of working age judges, prosecutors and attorneys (that have graduated between 1974 and 2014). Our presentation focus on the perception of law and judiciary. It explores their attitudes with regards to neutrality and effectiveness of legal system determinants of these attitudes. The analysis will particularly aim to put the findings in comparative perspective and also compare it with the perceptions and attitudes of general population where possible.

Sociology of law, as well as other special sociological disciplines dealing with social institutions, is burdened by the epistemological methodological diffi culties in their studies (sociological studies of law). Th e diffi culties are caused by the diff erentiation of the institutions in the terms of building selfidentity and autonomy and they appear in the form of institutional resistance and discursive exclusion. All the problems can be identifi ed as the eff ect of the operational closure of the institutions and production of the self-description. In the case of law we discuss the normative closure of the discourse as an expression of the institutional resistance and discursive expropriation. Th e focus of the work are the epistemological and methodological diffi culties as a problem for the Sociology of Law, and the problem of the normative closing of the legal discourse as the cause. Th e manifestation of the epistemological methodological diffi culties can be seen in several instances : a) the institutional reactivity of rights as a “social problem” , b) the construction of the identity rights through the establishment of diff erences, c) determining the sociology of law as an external perspective on law and d) the normative closing of the legal discourse through the eff ects of conceptual and discursive expropriation. When asked how the sociology of law can deal with these diffi culties in principle corresponds in the end of this work.