Transitional Justice and Its Discontents: Socioeconomic Justice in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Limits of International Intervention

ABSTRACT

The incorporation of socioeconomic concerns into transitional justice has traditionally, as a result of prevailing liberal notions about dealing with the past, been both conceptually and practically difficult. This article demonstrates and accounts for these difficulties through the case of Bosnia and Herzegovina, a country which has been characterized by a complex transition process and a far-reaching international intervention, encompassing transitional justice and peacebuilding as well as political and economic reforms. Examining the limits of international intervention in Bosnia and the marginalization of socioeconomic justice issues, the article analyses the events surrounding the protests that broke out in February 2014, and the ensuing international engagement with the protest movement. Faced with a broad-based civic movement calling for socioeconomic justice, the international community struggled to understand its claims as justice issues, framing them instead as problems to be tackled through reforms aimed at completing Bosnia’s transition towards a market economy. The operation of peacebuilding and transitional justice within the limits of neoliberal transformation is thus instrumental in explaining how and why socioeconomic justice issues become marginalized, as well as accounting for the expression of popular discontent where justice becomes an object of contestation and external intervention.     

Transitional Justice in Peacebuilding: Dynamics of Contestation in the DRC

ABSTRACT

This article examines the place of transitional justice in peacebuilding by exploring how domestic and international actors frame this relationship and how this, in turn, moulds dynamics of contestation around transitional justice. In the transitional justice literature, contestation is usually framed around an international–domestic dichotomy: transitional justice agendas promoted by external actors confront strategies of instrumental adaptation of transitional justice by domestic elites and the adoption of alternative transitional justice approaches by local actors. Based on an analysis of transitional justice policy-making in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), this paper proposes that a more multifaceted reading of contestation to transitional justice is needed. In the DRC, both external and domestic actors variously acted as transitional justice promoters and resisters, and their positioning on transitional justice was strongly conditioned by their broader understandings of the nature of the conflict and transitional justice’s role in peacebuilding. It is therefore suggested that contestation of transitional justice does not necessarily reflect a rejection of international approaches to justice, but instead more broadly expresses a lack of agreement on what transitional justice is and what its goals are. The article thus contributes to a broader interrogation of how discourses about the meaning of transitional justice are constructed in practice.     

Security Sector Reform and Transitional Justice in Kosovo: Comparing the Kosovo Security Force and Police Reform Processes

Abstract

Transitional justice and security sector reform are critical in post-conflict settings, particularly regarding the reform of judicial systems, intelligence services, police, correctional systems, the military, and addressing systemic massive human rights abuses committed by individuals representing these institutions. Accordingly, the relationship between security sector reform and transitional justice mechanisms, such as vetting, the representation of ethnic minorities in key institutions, the resettlement and reintegration of the former combatants deserve special attention from scholars. This article presents a comparative analysis of the reform of police and security forces in Kosovo, and explores the causes of different outcomes of these two processes.     

Global Assemblages of Security Governance and Contemporary International Intervention

ABSTRACT

This article draws from the concept of assemblages in order to examine the component parts of contemporary international interventions. It argues that in contrast mainstream analyses of statebuilding and peacebuilding, as well as more critical treatments that tie interventions to the concept of 'international order', the concept of assemblages offers a more compelling vantage point from which to examine the disparate lines of forces that make up modern-day interventions. The article proposes an exploration of some of the component parts that sustain the current assemblage of governance, security, and international intervention and draws our attention to their self-sustaining rationalities.     

Security Provision after Regime Change: Local Militias and Political Entities in Post-Qaddafi Tripoli

This paper discusses the way the newly formed political entities and the local militias engage in statebuilding practices during Libya's transitional period of 2011–12. Focusing on the encounters between these actors in the security field, it provides insight into the capacity and strategy of national actors to build state structures and to develop the political arrangements that they deem necessary. It does so by identifying the key actors involved, as well as the interactions between them and the constantly evolving relations of control, power and authority. It shows how actors in the security field engage with each other in their efforts to expand and to institutionalize networks and influence, and the competition and alignments with other security actors that are active in the transitional phase and thereafter.     

Might Makes Right: War-Related Payments in Bosnia and Herzegovina

ABSTRACT

This article explores the patterns of distribution of material reparations (compensation) for victims and veterans in post-1995 Bosnia and Herzegovina. Drawing on bottom-up approaches to reparative justice and critical peacebuilding, it explains the existing material reparation schemes in Bosnia as outcomes of the post-war transition and interests of the main transitional actors. It first explores the different approaches to war-related compensation for victim and veteran groups and then demonstrates that veterans have formed powerful pressure groups, drawing on extensive political and economic resources. Their organizations have been receiving socioeconomic support in exchange for electoral endorsement and public political support. As victims are fragmented ethno-nationally, by categories, and also lack capacities, their means to leverage the authorities for change are limited, even when matched with NGO and international support. This paper argues that unless material reparation is distributed in a transparent and consistent manner, it may create additional social cleavages and tensions.     

Practicing Normality: An Examination of Unrecognizable Transitional Justice Mechanisms in Post-Conflict Sierra Leone

ABSTRACT

Transitional justice and peacebuilding mechanisms have a tendency to reflect the extraordinary nature of conflict. These recognizable mechanisms—official bodies and institutions with preconceived goals and processes—are often inaccessible and undesired. In fact, what is often desired in post-conflict societies is the ordinary: a transition to a ‘new normal’. This article explores the various ways in which Sierra Leoneans practice normality in the post-conflict era. This is done through economic restoration, agricultural activities and religious engagement. Ultimately, these mechanisms are often seen as a more legitimate and meaningful way for many ordinary Sierra Leoneans to move past their war-related experiences and find some sense of peace and justice.     

Mapping the Nexus of Transitional Justice and Peacebuilding

ABSTRACT

This article explores the convergences and divergence between transitional justice and peacebuilding, by considering some of the recent developments in scholarship and practice. It examines the notion of ‘peace’ in transitional justice and the idea of ‘justice’ in peacebuilding. It highlights that transitional justice and peacebuilding often engage with similar or related ideas, though the scholarship in each field has developed largely in parallel to each other, and often without any significant engagement between the fields of inquiry. The article also notes that both fields share other commonalities, insofar as they often neglect questions of capital (political, social, economic) and at times, gender. It is suggested that trying to locate the nexus in the first place draws attention to where peace and justice have actually got to be produced in order for there not to be conflict and violence. This in turn demonstrates that locally, ‘peace’ and ‘justice’ do not always look like the ‘peace’ and ‘justice’ drawn up by international donors and peacebuilders; and, despite the ‘turn to the local’ in international relations, it is surprising just how many local and everyday dynamics are (dis)missed as sources of peace and justice, or potential avenues of addressing the past.     

Building a Repressive Peace: The Case of Post-Genocide Rwanda

Abstract

Security, economic recovery, democracy and statebuilding are seen as tenets of post-conflict peacebuilding in the academic literature. In Rwanda, 15 years of post-genocide peace were built through security, economic recovery and statebuilding, but without democratisation. The result was a repressive peace. The Rwandan case suggests that post-conflict peacebuilding does not require democracy; that elections can reinforce authoritarian tendencies; and that statebuilding can lead to a repressive peace. It also suggests that the repressive peace can be durable, at least in the short to medium term.     

Water Service Provision and Peacebuilding in East Timor: Exploring the Socioecological Determinants for Sustaining Peace

This article presents an examination of post-conflict water resource management in East Timor through the United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET) with the aim of contributing to our understanding of the opportunities and challenges inherent to the sustainable management of water resources in post-conflict countries and of gaining insight into its potential long-term benefits for sustaining peace. The article contributes one of the first theory-centred, empirical analyses of post-conflict water resource management, in which the challenges and failures of UNTAET in East Timor shed light on the opportunities and risks inherent to post-conflict water service provision for peacebuilding.     

Public Opinion and Military Intervention: Afghanistan,Iraq and Libya

Britain has participated in several military interventions of varying duration, extent and political controversy in recent years. This article analyses public opinion towards the most recent intervention in Libya in 2011, looking at three different aspects of the topic. First, it examines differences in cross‐national attitudes towards military action in Libya amongst NATO countries. Secondly, it then looks in detail at which social groups were more or less likely to approve of British involvement, comparing this with group attitudes towards Britain's role in Afghanistan and Iraq. Thirdly, it assesses how public opinion shifted during the course of the action in Libya, looking at three key indicators of the popular mood: whether Britain was right or wrong to take military action; how well the war is going; and assessments of David Cameron's handling of the conflict. Broader reflections are then made about public opinion towards British involvement in future military action.     

Reflections of the nexus between justice and peacebuilding

This commentary reflects on eight articles recently published in this journal as part of a special issue on the nexus between transitional justice and statebuilding (Volume 10, Issue 3, 2016). It positions the special issue within an emerging ‘fourth phase’ literature on transitional justice that draws on critiques of liberal peacebuilding to urge an expansion of its boundaries to embrace socio-economic issues. It is argued that the type of analysis found in the special issue, characterized by in-depth, on-the-ground empirical analysis of complex domestic politics of material accumulation and ideological contestation, marks a significant and welcome advance in a literature which to this point has been largely de-contextualized, exhortatory and over-reliant on tired binaries of the ‘international and the local’ or the ‘liberal and legitimate’.     

Disciplinary Divides in Post-Conflict Justice and Peace: Tracking If and How we Share Ideas

ABSTRACT

The study of post-conflict justice and peace incorporates ideas from many disciplines and on a range of topics including justice, reconciliation, democratization, and peace. While diversity is valuable, it can also lead to confusion in theory and practice and so requires close evaluation of how diverse ideas interact, and to what end. This paper begins the systematic examination of such interactions by using new bibliometric software to track citations between two particularly influential literatures contributing to post-conflict theory: the legal and the psychosocial. The paper describes how these traditions interact and the impact on the post-conflict literature as a whole.     

Resilient Peace: Exploring the Theory and Practice of Resilience in Peacebuilding Interventions

ABSTRACT

This introduction provides a conceptual and theoretical background to the more detailed analyses contained in the articles of the Special Section. The introduction firstly presents a critical overview of the rise of resilience and its increasing role in shaping the terms of international interventions. It identifies a set of interrelated conceptual themes relevant to theorising the relationship between resilience and peacebuilding and evaluates how appropriate a resilience approach might be in promoting sustainable peace and what might be its main dangers and pitfalls.     

Political Sociology of International Interventions: Peacebuilders and the Ground

ABSTRACT

This special issue, instead of questioning what effect peacebuilding interventions have on post-conflict societies, analyses what the ground of intervention does to peacebuilders. It demonstrates that everyday interactions on the ground shape the interveners and even the scope of their missions. We delineate how a political sociology approach might break away from binaries (‘internationals/locals’) and, instead, illuminate processes (of internationalization and localization). We intend to offer a political sociology of the ‘intervention encounter’, that is, to scrutinize the everyday interactions among peacebuilders and between peacebuilders and domestic actors, and to investigate effects of the ground on peacebuilding organizations, doctrines and decision-making processes, as well as on peacebuilders’ trajectories, positions, professional practices and representations. In fine, we explore how peacebuilders’ relations to the ground structure the socio-professional field of peacebuilding.     

Security Sector Reform from a Policy Transfer Perspective: A Comparative Study of International Interventions in the Palestinian Territories,Liberia and Timor-Leste

Security sector reform (SSR), targeting security forces and their management and oversight institutions, has become a major feature of international peace- and statebuilding activities. The article draws on policy transfer research to assess substantive and procedural changes in how international actors intervene in the security governance of fragile or post-conflict states. By comparing transfer processes in Liberia, Timor-Leste and the Palestinian Territories, the article shows that despite variations across political, economic and strategic factors in each domestic context, external SSR interventions showed distinct similarities. SSR interventions expanded their substantive scope over time; less directly coercive mechanisms of persuasion and socialization increasingly replaced the direct imposition of external models of security governance; and the influence of domestic elite actors on transfer processes increased over the duration of interventions.     

和谐社会之制度正义诉求

一个和谐的社会,其制度必然是具有正义性的。制度正义包括制度本身的正义和制度运行的正义两个层次。在现实历史进程中,对制度正义的诉求,必然要求通过制度创新来实现,同时,对制度正义的诉求也会对制度创新产生积极的意义。因此,我们需要在制度本身的正义和制度运行的正义的指引下,以制度创新为动力,通过深化改革,切实克服影响社会和谐的体制弊端,建立新的社会制度规范,为和谐社会提供新的制度保障。     

Administrative Justice: A Libertarian Cinderella in Search of an Egalitarian Prince

This article argues that the political significance of the Coalition government's proposed changes to administrative justice, including the abolition of the Administrative Justice and Tribunals Council, is in danger of passing unnoticed, despite its potential significance for the Big Society agenda. It suggests that the retrieval of genuine perspective lies in paying closer attention both to the contemporary importance of administrative justice and to the political debates of the 1950s and 1960s, which set opposing views of administrative justice in broadly libertarian and egalitarian contexts respectively. It concludes that the recovery in particular of an egalitarian account of administrative justice is necessary to animate, and rebalance, the debate. Administrative justice might then be perceived as an essential part of a broader political vision and a significant aspect of social justice more ambitiously conceived.     

Homelessness Interventions in Georgia: Rapid Re-Housing,Transitional Housing,and the Likelihood of Returning to Shelter

Since 1987, billions of dollars in homeless assistance have been allocated annually by the U.S. federal government. Yet few evaluations of homelessness interventions exist. This study analyzes the likelihood that households in Georgia returned to shelter within two years of leaving one of three interventions: rapid re-housing (RRH), transitional housing (TH), and emergency shelter (ES), with the latter serving as a reference. Using propensity scores, RRH households were matched to comparable TH and ES households. Generalized linear mixed modeling then controlled for household characteristics as well as variation between intervention implementations. We find that the likelihood of returning to shelter did not seem to be affected by whether study households were gradually transitioned or rapidly placed into housing. Additionally, the effect of TH for households without children seems highly dependent on the intervention’s implementation, which deserves further study. Our findings are generalizable to a small, better resourced segment of the general homeless population.     

The New China: Dynamism and vulnerability

Abstract

From 1998 to 2003, the Solomon Islands found itself in the grip of ‘the Tensions’, a violent civil conflict that left some 200 people dead, more than 20,000 displaced, and countless others subjected to torture, rape, fear and intimidation. In the aftermath of the conflict, two dominant approaches to post-conflict justice emerged. The first, implemented by the Regional Assistance Mission to the Solomon Islands (RAMSI), favoured a ‘rule of law’ approach according to which large numbers of militants on both sides were arrested and processed through the criminal justice system resulting, in many cases, in the imposition of lengthy period of imprisonment. The second, ‘reconciliation’ approach, favoured local, grassroots, traditional and indigenous justice processes and were routinely implements by community groups, women's organisations and the churches. This article demonstrates that in the absence of a formally planned transitional justice process, these two approaches to post-conflict justice have come into serious tension with proponents of each accusing the other of hampering their justice efforts. It examines those tensions and analyses the extent to which the Solomon Islands’ Truth and Reconciliation Commission, designed in part to provide a bridge between the rule of law and reconciliation approaches, has been able to quell this new set of tensions.