Article

Impact Assessment, Not Evaluation: Defining a Limited Role for Positivism in the Study of Transitional Justice

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Abstract

Discussions of impact assessment and evaluation are the newest installment in the brief history of the field of transitional justice. Noticeably, a positivist logic of inference is being favored in these discussions. This article argues that a distinction should be made between impact assessment and evaluation, and that the role of positivist approaches is best conceived of as contributing to the former. Evaluation, on the other hand, should be undertaken by those analysts willing to embrace and promote normative ideals, to which they compare practices on the ground. This type of 'comparison to the ideal' is the province of interpretive-critical logics of inference. After carving out a modest role for positivism, the article presents a quantitative analysis of transitional justice impact to show how such a logic is good for grounding observers' expectations for different types of transitional cases. The analysis demonstrates that transitional justice mechanisms do not have a uniquely destabilizing effect across such cases. The article concludes with a syncretist view - that interpretive, ideal-based evaluations should proceed alongside positivist impact assessments.

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... To je rezultat sloma globalne radikalne ljevice koji je doveo do napuštanja paradigme "klasne borbe", čije mjesto je zauzela paradigma "ljudskih prava". 7 Osamdesete godine su označile kraj represivne vlasti u Južnoj Americi, što je imalo utjecaje na etabliranje tranzicijske pravde i njenog pojma. Pojam nastaje iz potreba južnoameričkih društava da se izvrši demokratska reforma, odnosno pokrenu političke promjene. ...
... What is transitional justice? A Backgrounder.7 Arthur, P., 2009. ...
Article
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There is no universal definition of transitional justice. Differences among scholars and practitioners in defining transitional justice can be divided to explanations of transitions from: dictatorship to democracy, and/or war to peace, and/or structural violence and inequality to equal and non-violent social structures. These differences are part of dissimilar understandings of the genesis and development of transitional justice. Aim of this paper is to describe the emergence and development of transitional justice, as concept, scientific discipline and praxis. The paper argues that transitional justice as a concept originated in the 1980s, after which it was gradually established as an independent scientific discipline, while its practical purpose was achieved only after the Second World War; although the embryos of transitional justice could be traced much earlier.
... It is, they said, 'not the domain of lawyers alone' and no longer probes solely 'accountability concerns.' From very different vantage points, Christine Bell (2009) and Geoff Dancy (2010) sketch the broadening of the field along remarkably similar contours. Both observe how research is beginning to interrogate whether transitional justice actually 'works' -that is, whether it 'delivers on the political goals to which it lays claim' (Bell 2009:10, for which, see Payne et al. 2008, Olsen et al. 2010a, Olsen et al. 2010b, Olsen et al. 2010c people understand themselves (subjectivity), the way they share understandings (intersubjectivity) and the way disparate understandings of the same symbols often collide.' ...
... This is indexed by the emergence of a series of edited volumes (Hinton 2011, McEvoy and McGregor 2008, Shaw and Waldorf 2010 as well as a range of empirically-rigorous, context-specific studies (Wagner 2008, Miller 2010, Drexler 2011. As a result, and secondly, the growing purchase of anthropological thinking and methodologies within transitional justice has brought with it a recalibration in the level of analysis: from an interest in universal discourses and practices to that of their reproduction 'from below' (McEvoy and McGregor 2008) or 'on the ground' (Dancy 2010) within what have been variously termed 'localised' (Shaw and Waldorf 2010), 'quotidian' (Eastmond and Selimovic 2012) or 'everyday' (Riaño-Alcalá and Baines 2011) contexts. This has led to an interest in 'justice in the vernacular' (Hinton 2011) (2012) and Marita Eastmond and Johanna Mannergren Selimovic (2012) appear to interpret space as a similar container within which the processes of truth, justice and reconciliation play themselves out. ...
Thesis
The memory of the disappeared in Argentina is heavily and historically regulated and framed. We can use landscapes of memory as a prism to reconstruct the wider constitutive field of memory through which the reality of the past has been framed. By reconstructing this field, we can trace the discourses and logics of memory according to which meaning has come to be attributed to the past and a project for a future politics has been delineated. A study of the Parque de la Memoria reveals that Argentine collective memory has a cultural biography in which it tends towards two politics logics of memory which shape – and are shaped by – the concrete interventions over time and space of human rights actors and the understanding of the past among the wider interpellated Argentine public who situate within it in an expanded field. As a politics shaped by memory and mourning, the politics of transition in Argentina is revealed to be paradoxically emptied out of politics. Whether human rights groups choose to remember the desparecidos as innocent victims or 30,000 revolutionaries, so as to advance a social grieving or a politics of grievance, there is a lacuna at the heart of the memory of the disappeared as to who the disappeared really were. Though we find images and narrative discourses of quotidian humanity and political activism, we do not find the two together. The political logics of memory that have regulated the memory of the disappeared do not correspond to the reason of human rights groups, however, but that of society. The ontological subjects of the disappeared have been socially constructed in and through this memory as subjects that this society was willing to recognise and remember, with lasting implications for Argentine society and politics that continue to this day.
... Both groups have been groping for answers. However, while legal interpretivists have been resistant to quantitative measures, econometricians have been disinclined to include justice-related variables in their models of civil war (see Thoms et al 2008Thoms et al , 2010Dancy 2010). 1 The opportunity for merging different approaches is ripe, and the payoff is potentially great. At stake are our baseline expectations for post-conflict justice, and a potential solution to the ongoing debate about the role of accountability in promoting peace. ...
... Similarly, Sikkink and Walling (2007) find a positive influence of trials on human rights and democracy in Latin America, but only by comparing broad averages of different standard measures over time. Finally, Olsen et al. (2010:129), in their study of the 'peace dividend,' present only a table with summary statistics linking different mechanisms to conflict recurrence-a strategy also employed by Dancy (2010). To date, few studies have employed statistical methods sophisticated enough to fully address the puzzle at hand: whether transitional justice mechanisms lead to a more or less durable peace. ...
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Prevalent in current discussions of peace-building are various claims about the ways in which justice-seeking mechanisms - like human rights trials and truth and reconciliation commissions - can quell violent conflict. In fact, ‘transitional justice’ has attained the status of orthodoxy among global peace-promoting actors and international institutions. Though propositions about the pacifying effects of transitional justice mechanisms have swirled about for over a decade, to date very few comprehensive studies have adequately evaluated them. In fact, many ‘realist’ scholars oriented toward producing political order remain justifiably skeptical regarding the impact of transitional justice institutions: what if they actually are destabilizing and cause a relapse into violent conflict? Furthermore, there has been little interaction between legalistic approaches emphasizing ‘unproven possibilities’ and scientific approaches emphasizing ‘empirical realities.’ More specifically, those deeply involved with transitional justice have rarely crossed paths with those enmeshed in conflict studies. We seek to address the lack of hypothesis-testing and dialogue by constructing an integrated model of peace transition, duration, and conflict recurrence that incorporates the newest information on cross-national transitional justice efforts. Utilizing the PRIO dataset, we test the proposition that domestic trials and truth commissions are more effective than political amnesties and repression for producing a lasting peace. Depending on the model chosen, we show that transitional justice mechanisms at worst have no effect, and at best slightly extend the duration of peace following violent conflict. Our findings encourage a reevaluation of the peace v. justice debate, one that moves toward more humility on each side.
... Durante los últimos 20 años se han desarrollado cinco importantes estudios cuantitativos que analizan estadísticamente la contribución de los enjuiciamientos, amnistías y comisiones de la verdad a la democracia y la protección de los derechos humanos en los regímenes democráticos post autoritarios y post conflicto (Dancy, 2010;Stewart & Wiebelhaus-Brahm, 2017;Thoms et al., 2010). Estos estudios generaron teorías de alcance medio e hipótesis de investigación que han sido replicadas en los análisis posteriores desarrollador por los académicos que reúnen y sistematizan información sobre el uso de mecanismos de justicia transicional a nivel de países. ...
Thesis
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El objetivo de la tesis fue evaluar la contribución de los mecanismos de justicia transicional a la prevención de golpes de estado y la protección de los derechos humanos en los países de América Latina y el Caribe que experimentaron transiciones democráticas entre 1970 y 2010. Para cumplir con este objetivo, se formularon siete hipótesis basadas en las teorías de alcance medio vigentes en el campo de estudio. La prueba de hipótesis consistió en estimar coeficientes de regresión logística de la probabilidad de ocurrencia de golpes de estado y coeficientes de regresión lineal del puntaje de protección latente de los derechos humanos de integridad física, en función del número de enjuiciamientos, amnistías y comisiones de la verdad acumuladas en los años posteriores a la transición democrática. En todos los modelos, se incluyeron variables de efecto fijo por país e indicadores de control estadísticos del crecimiento económico, el nivel de democracia, el tamaño de la población, la independencia del poder judicial, y la existencia de conflictos armados. Los resultados obtenidos muestran, en primer lugar, que las amnistías están correlacionadas positivamente con la probabilidad de ocurrencia de golpes de estado, mientras que los enjuiciamientos y comisiones de la verdad la disminuyen significativamente. En segundo lugar, los resultados revelaron correlaciones positivas entre los enjuiciamientos y comisiones de la verdad, y el nivel de protección de los derechos humanos en los países estudiados.
... Jones, for instance, argues that the implications of this dynamic for the field are that there are certain "ways of knowing" in and of transitional justice that are supposedly objective and thus dominant ( 2021 , 165). This knowledge results from research that is concerned with design, implementation, and evaluation ( Dancy 2010 ). These dominant ways of knowing are created when transitional justice is applied in technical ways, as a set of policy responses that seek to "achieve a predetermined end" of peace, truth, justice, or reconciliation ( Zunino 2011 ). ...
Article
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Since its emergence as a field of scholarship and practice, transitional justice has coalesced around a set of mechanisms to deal with a legacy of violence. The “pull” toward mechanisms, institutions, and structures as a means of delivering justice has led to certain kinds of knowledge being recognized as “transitional justice research” in the mainstream. Drawing on the theory of epistemic positioning, we reveal how hierarchies of academic knowledge and the dominant “ways of knowing” in and of transitional justice are created. Through citation analysis, we reveal an emerging canon, a central body of valuable and seemingly “inevitable” knowledge of transitional justice consisting primarily of structure and outcome-oriented inquiries in the disciplines of politics, international relations, and law and consolidating a standardized model of how to “do” transitional justice. We argue that this canonization comes at the expenses of alternative approaches that challenge the core assumptions of the field. Inquiries that prioritize agency or process and reimagine what transitional justice could be remain bounded to their disciplines and subfields. We demonstrate how certain anxieties about the survival of the field result in policing of the boundaries of the field, creating hierarchies of “valuable” knowledge, and resisting the “decolonizing” impulse.
... For example, the focus could have been on investigating possible relationships between participation in (or, more broadly, individual experiences of ) transitional justice processes -including through giving testimony in a criminal trial or helping to create a memorial -and resilience. This is a potential topic for future research and one that would represent a novel extension of existing work on transitional justice impact (see, e.g., Balcells et al., 2022;Dancy, 2010;Van der Merwe et al., 2009). Another angle might have been to examine how expressions of everyday resilience shape engagement with transitional justice processes and the possibilities that individuals have, through their social-ecological relationships, to 'actively claim and promote appropriate transitional justice mechanisms and ideas about justice' (Kastner, 2020: 382). ...
... The problem with concepts such as democracy and reconciliation is that they are ideals which are not easily defined. Their conceptualisation is always an object of different idealistic and conceptual understandings (Dancy, 2010;Raimundo, 2013). ...
... Methodologically, it is very difficult to demonstrate causation in social scientific inquiry, and the study of transitional justice is no exception, despite academic and policy demands for evidence of impact (Duggan 2010;Dancy 2010). Statistical analyses show some positive correlation between specific transitional justice measures and improvements in democracy and human rights records, particularly when several measures are used (Olsen, Payne, and Reiter 2010). ...
Article
Transitional justice measures are frequently expected to help promote peace in conflict-affected countries, through measures that rely heavily upon legal or legalized processes such as trials and commissions of inquiry. They are also often expected to influence or promote reform in legal processes and institutions, including the judiciary, the constitution, and legislation, in ways that are expected to help promote peace in future post-conflict states. However, not only is the evidence of the role of law in promoting peace through transitional justice a mixed one, but more importantly, the emphasis on transitional justice often overlooks the ways in which law is expected to play a role in promoting peace more broadly and in ways intertwined with transitional justice, through rule of law promotion, often by international actors, and through peace agreements that include specific institutional and governance measures, including power-sharing arrangements. These rule of law and governance measures similarly have a mixed record with regard to their effects for either short- or long-term peace. Closer analysis of the role of law and legalized mechanisms in producing or supporting peace is needed, including analysis of the types of law and mechanisms deployed. Drawing on fieldwork in Sierra Leone, Uganda, Colombia, Kenya, Sri Lanka, and Sudan, among others, this paper will elaborate on the challenges of using law for peace via governance and rule of law measures, as well as through transitional justice.
... Without strong conceptual roots and a solid theoretical grounding within which to situate analysis, and without clarity on intentions, scholars tend to direct their attention arbitrarily to the level of social or institutional structure that they are interested in or that they would like to see transitional justice efforts address. 169 Scholars interested in institutional design and implementation of truth commissions may orient their focus towards an analysis of the final report's reception. Success here is often defined by the extent to which the commission fulfilled its mandate. ...
Article
Since the early 1990s, transitional justice has established itself as a field of study and practice. Proponents make normative links between transitional justice processes—for example, criminal trials, truth commissions and reparations—and broader societal and systemic outcomes, such as healing, reconciliation, peace and democracy. There is, however, a paucity of evidence on the actual effects and experiences of transitional justice interventions in waraffected and fragile places. This paper uses a bibliographic search methodology to pull together the extant evidence on local experiences of transitional justice interventions and finds that local perceptions and experiences of these processes are complex and do not conform with widely-held normative assertions about what transitional justice “ought” to accomplish. The implications for the transitional justice field are examined and recommendations for future research are proposed.
... Likewise, a study of 16 Latin American countries found trials and truth commissions to be associated with reinforcement of state-level HR (Martin Beristain, Páez, & González, 2000). Moreover, qualitative and historical comparative analyses have found no indications of truth commissions obstructing intergroup reconciliation and peace (e.g., Hayner, 1994;Kaye, 1997), a notion that has been reiterated by quantitative studies for both trials and truth commissions (Dancy, 2010;Gates, Binningsbo, & Lie, 2007). A recent analysis of HR trials in Latin America, for example, found no evidence that trials hurt the (re)establishment of HR consciousness and behavior (Sikkink & Walling, 2007). ...
Article
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The international community has developed multiple approaches to address large-scale human rights (HR) violations (e.g., genocide). In the current contribution, we first provide a review of different approaches to intergroup violence (AIVs), and explain how these approaches might (re-)establish HR consciousness and behavior in postconflict societies. We then integrate this literature with the HR literature and propose a framework to guide future research on the psychological underpinnings of different AIVs and their effects on HR. Informed by HR research, we argue for a multidimensional conception of HR consciousness (encompassing HR knowledge, endorsement, commitment, and restriction) and a distinction of internalized HR behavior versus HR compliance. These outcomes should be affected by an AIV through appraisals of the AIV (e.g., perceived fairness) and subsequent perceptions of ingroup and outgroup norms, perceptions of the outgroup, and emotions (e.g., anger). Further, appraisals should be affected largely by people's group memberships and preexisting belief and attitudinal systems. Rather than providing an overall research program with a coherent and specific set of hypotheses, we provide a conceptual framework that clarifies what, according to AIV and HR literature, future research should focus on, and that can help to systematically take stock of past research.
Article
This article examines Scandinavian donor practices in Bosnia-Herzegovina (BiH) with regards to post-conflict justice activities. BiH has been a laboratory of reconstruction, peace-building and transitional justice processes since the end of the war in 1995. While issues related to rebuilding and developing war-torn societies and their economies have attracted extensive scholarly attention, the question of international aid practices in transitional justice contexts remains widely understudied. Although the influence of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in reconciliatory transitional justice work has been growing, the relationship between international donors and local NGOs involved in these projects remains very limited. The objective of this study is to explore why this is the case. This research draws on Scandinavian aid practices in BiH – particularly the cases of Norway and Sweden – as Scandinavian countries are considered norm entrepreneurs not only in world politics but also in the field of development. This research relies on over three-dozen in depth interviews (with government representatives, experts, and activists), donor evaluation reports, and media documents. The article discusses the factors contributing to the reluctance of Scandinavian donors to provide financial assistance to local NGOs engaging in restorative justice processes in BiH.
Article
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There is a growing awareness that truth commissions (TCs) often leave victim and ex-combatant participants aggrieved. This is problematic since it can undermine support for peace processes. When attempting to explain such shortcomings, previous research has not paid sufficient attention to the patrimonial sources of TC-participants’ frustration. We argue that such forms of disenchantment are largely caused by internationalised TCs’ patrimonial mode of working, utilising tactics such as motorcades as manifestations of power and brokers to mobilise witnesses. To highlight the relevance of our argument, we use the work of the Sierra Leone Truth and Reconciliation Commission as an example.
Article
The article examines transitional justice as a set of post-conflict settlement measures. Today, transitional courts, truth commissions, amnesties, and reparations are transitional justice mechanisms that are widely and relatively effectively used to resolve conflicts around the world. Today, the mechanisms of transitional justice are also being improved to meet the needs of victims of armed conflict. Sociological research confirms that the combination of international and local dimensions of responsibility is an important demand on the part of victims of armed conflict.At the same time, the prosecution of perpetrators of crimes committed during armed conflict in modern conditions concerns individual prosecution, which often goes beyond public prosecution. The state retains the obligation to bring perpetrators of crimes to justice, but this can be done through mechanisms of international law.The practice of post-conflict settlement is due to the fact that not all courts are equally effective in punishing those guilty of crimes and criminal prosecution is not always successful. Formal truth-seeking processes involving the investigation of past violations involve truth commissions. Another important mechanism of transitional justice is the politics of memory. The politics of memory as an element of transitional justice encompasses the work of states with a historical past.The combination of transitional state justice measures with the use of ad-hoc institutions allows for the restoration of justice in the most controversial dimensions of armed conflict. Peace is accelerating in the direction of autonomy and expansion of the mandates of transitional justice institutions, organized memory policy, effective cooperation of national and international institutions to determine their jurisdiction in human rights, sociological research on the needs of victims of armed conflict. Evaluation of the effectiveness of transitional justice mechanisms is possible only if their interconnectedness, interaction with civil society and the state are taken into account.
Article
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Chapter
Over time, political and social theorists have struggled to understand the constructive pathways of preventing, mediating, and transitioning societies away from conflict toward sustainable peace. The thread linking leadership with transitional justice instruments is the ontological and epistemological understanding of how to direct judicial strategies toward deterring interstate and intrastate violent activities. In today's environment, the emerging study of transitional justice is recognized as a staple for nation-building, democratic reform, and peacebuilding. This chapter addresses leadership and its role in the transitional justice system. Moreover, this presentation provides a leadership model for transitional justice practitioners as a means to influence deterrence measures and as a potential resolution of today's global judicial challenges with long-term international security implications.
Article
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Article
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Transitional justice refers to processes of dealing with the aftermath of violent conflicts and human rights abuses in order to provide for a peaceful future. It makes use of a number of instruments and mechanisms - including tribunals, truth commissions, memory work, and reparations - which aim at uncovering the truth about past crimes, putting past wrongs right, holding perpetrators accountable, vindicating the dignity of victim-survivors, and contributing to reconciliation. The objective of this focus section is to critically assess the potential of transitional justice, its achievements thus far, any conflicting goals, and the inherent or external obstacles that limit its influence and reach. Through empirical case studies from across the globe it paints a multi-faceted picture of the strengths and weaknesses of the approach.
Article
This chapter examines the proliferation of transitional justice in recent decades and its important but increasingly complex relationship to security. It starts by considering the origins of transitional justice in the late twentieth century and its evolution from earlier democratization processes and exceptional times of transition to the contemporary, global phase of normalized and entrenched transitional justice. It then considers some of the key debates over justice and security, highlighting the prominence of the “justice dilemma” in scholarly and policy discussions, which often frame the issues as a choice between normative concerns and strategic considerations, as well as the range of critiques that increasingly call into question the dominant framing and underlying assumptions of the dilemma. Finally, the authors suggest that the main challenge for scholars and policymakers at the current juncture concerns the need to move beyond the state in terms of norms, agents, and geographies of transitional justice, and to rethink the relationship between justice and security from that perspective.
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Article
This article explores the use of political memory in examining, and providing indicators for, everyday processes of peacebuilding in divided societies, using Northern Ireland as a brief case study. Adopting a position critical of many formal peacebuilding indicators, the article argues for the utility of informal, ‘high resolution’ indicators that can be supplied by examining localized and everyday forms of post-conflict memory. In so doing, the article views the ‘dealing with the past’ and reconciliatory paradigm of social memory in identity driven conflicts as being inadequate for this purpose, and instead posits a more nuanced form of examining memory as a political arena. A case study of political memory in east Belfast is introduced to illustrate both the need for nuance in highlighting localized activity, and need to better reflect a complex and ambiguous peacebuilding environment. Suggestions for methodological approaches geared to capturing processes of everyday political memory, and how these processes can inform praxis, concludes the study.
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Debates over justice for gross human rights violations in active conflicts and transitions are often framed as a dilemma that emphasizes perceived tensions between human rights and democracy on one side and peace and stability on the other. Despite the prominence of the justice dilemma in the scholarly literature, little attention has been directed to examining its significance for global policy making. Beyond the rhetoric, it is unclear whether the dilemma frames the issues for key international actors and how it shapes their policies. This article addresses this gap by investigating the role of the justice dilemma in the foreign policy of the EU. First, it traces the origins of the dilemma and highlights important continuities in its framing over time. It then demonstrates how in pursuing ‘democratization’ and ‘stabilization’ approaches to justice, the EU often reproduces the underlying assumptions, perceived tensions and conventional solutions that circulate in scholarly and policy discussions. The final section examines the implications of the justice dilemma for European policy making. The article argues that the EU's preoccupation with the dilemma limits its ability to develop effective and innovative policies in this important field.
Article
Transitional justice as a field of inquiry is a relatively new one. Referring to the range of mechanisms used to assist the transition of a state or society from one form of (usually repressive) rule to a more democratic order, transitional justice has become the dominant language in which the move from war to peace is discussed in the early twenty-first century. Applying a deconstructive analysis to the question of transitional justice, the paper seeks to interrogate the core assumptions that underlie transitional justice literature in relation to the relationship between law, politics and justice. As a discourse, transitional justice is replete with antinomies or binary oppositions, that of war and peace being the most obvious. Therefore the essentially deconstructible structure of differánce already exists within the concept. By examining the ways in which legal and political narratives are framed and reproduced, the paper seeks to deconstruct the opposition between law and politics on which much of the transitional justice literature rests. The article does not purport to provide a definitive critical analysis of transitional justice but aims to provoke debate and to prompt critical scholars to engage with the themes raised by providing an introductory analysis of some of the core features of a field of inquiry which seems ripe for deconstruction.
Article
The traditional vision that international courts and tribunals do ‘good’ or create a better world through law is increasingly under question. International criminal justice started largely as a ‘faith’-based project, but is increasingly criticized in light of its actual record and impact. This essay examines this journey and, in particular, the role of ‘faith’ and ‘fact’ in the treatment and assessment of international criminal courts, through four core themes (‘effectiveness’, ‘fairness’, ‘fact-finding’, and legacy’) addressed in André Gide's version of the parable of The Return of the Prodigal Son. It argues that, in its ‘homecoming’, international criminal justice would benefit from a greater degree of realism by openly accepting its limitations and embracing its expressivist function. It cautions at the same time against exclusively quantitative understandings of impact, arguing that the power of international courts and tribunals lies not so much in their quantitative record as in their role in setting a moral or legal example or shaping discourse. It concludes that a better match between ‘idealism’ and ‘realism’ requires greater attention to the interplay between ‘international’, ‘domestic’, and ‘local’ responses to conflict, as well as recognition of their legitimate differences.
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This working paper has been prepared within the UNU-WIDER project 'Foreign Aid: Research and Communication (ReCom)', directed by Tony Addison and Finn Tarp. UNU-WIDER gratefully acknowledges specific programme contributions from the governments of Denmark (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Danida) and Sweden (Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency—Sida) for the Research and Communication (ReCom) programme. UNU-WIDER also acknowledges core financial support to UNU-WIDER's work programme from the governments of Finland (Ministry for Foreign Affairs), the United Kingdom (Department for International Development), and the governments of Denmark and Sweden. Abstract This paper examines the current security–governance–development nexus, something that is often also discussed under the concept of 'transitional justice' (TJ). The paper analyses how the ambiguous, evolving and expanding nature of the concept of TJ affects the planning, coordination, evaluation and assessment of aid given to conflict ridden, post-conflict or (post) authoritarian societies in order to strengthen their democracy. Special attention is paid to gender justice. Illustrations are drawn mainly from Africa where many TJ processes and mechanisms are currently taking place.
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