Dealing with the Past: Transitional Justice and De-communization

Abstract

This chapter reviews the literature around the study of post-communist transitional justice. It begins by comparing how different scholars have conceptualized transitional justice, particularly the range of empirical phenomena that authors have decided to encompass when they have dealt with truth and justice issues. Secondly, the chapter shows how, depending on an author’s empirical delineation of the phenomenon, the independent variables chosen across time or across countries have also varied. Thirdly, the chapter turns the methodological equation around and examines those (albeit far fewer) scholars who have examined transitional justice as a causal phenomenon and sought to answer what transitional justice actually brings to society. Lastly, the overview presents a set of sub-themes in the field of post-communist transitional justice, namely the comparative study of institutions devoted to TJ, the growing importance of international influences on TJ, and the place of specifically post-conflict TJ in the context of former Yugoslavia.