ABSTRACT
In 2022, Claus Offe published the second edition of his book, The Tunnel at the End of the Light: Exploring the Political Transition in the New East. 1 While other authors had imagined the fall of communism in East Central Europe and the dawn of a new era of pluralism as a kind of entrance into something reflective of Western freedom and opulence, for Offe, the reality of the transition does not live up to the imaginings of some of those who had hoped for a much better post-communist (or, if one prefers, post-socialist) reality. In any event, the economic challenges after November 1989 immediately became the subject of controversy – as shown in the drawn-out debate in Slovenia and other states in the region concerning how much to liberalize the economy and which privatization plan to adopt – and opened up new possibilities for criminalization throughout the region, but especially in the war zone comprising Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Serbia, and Montenegro.
