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Reconciliation by Stealth advances a novel approach to evaluating the effects of transitional justice in postconflict societies. Through her examination of the Balkan conflicts, Denisa Kostovicova asks what happens when former adversaries discuss legacies of violence and atrocity, and whether it is possible to do so without further deepening animosities. Reconciliation by Stealth shifts our attention from what people say about war crimes, to how they deliberate past wrongs. Bringing together theories of democratic deliberation and peacebuilding, Kostovicova demonstrates how people from opposing ethnic groups reconcile through reasoned, respectful, and empathetic deliberation about a difficul...
While exploring events that led to the bloodshed in Kosovo in 1999. Denisa Kostovicova shows that the legacy of ethnic segregation is one of the major obstacles the international community faces in its efforts to establish an integrated multi-ethnic society in this territory." "Of interest to academics and students of nationalism and politics as well as practitioners and journalists, this book is an important advance in research on one of the most tragic European conflicts of recent times."--Jacket.
The concepts of reconciliation and transitional justice are inextricably linked in a new body of normative meta-theory underpinned by claims related to their effects in managing the transformation of deeply divided societies to a more stable and more democratic basis. This edited volume is dedicated to a critical re-examination of the key premises on which the debates in this field pivot. The contributions problematise core concepts, such as victimhood, accountability, justice and reconciliation itself; and provide a comparative perspective on the ethnic, ideological, racial and structural divisions to understand their rootedness in local contexts and to evaluate how they shape and constrain moving beyond conflict. With its systematic empirical analysis of a geographic and historic range of conflicts involving ethnic and racial groups, the volume furthers our grasp of contradictions often involved in transitional justice scholarship and practice and how they may undermine the very goals of peace, stability and reconciliation that they seek to promote. This book was originally published as a special issue of Ethnic and Racial Studies.
Persistent State Weakness in the Global Age addresses the question of why state weakness in the global era persists. It debunks a common assumption that state weakness is a stop-gap on the path to state failure and state collapse. Informed by a globalization perspective, the book shows how state weakness is frequently self-reproducing and functional. The interplay of global actors, policies and norms is analyzed from the standpoint of their internalization in a weak state through transnational networks. Contributors examine the reproduction of partial and discriminatory rule at the heart of persistent state weakness, drawing on a wide geographical range of case studies including the Middle East, the Balkans, the post-Soviet states and sub-Saharan Africa. The study of state-weakening dynamics related to institutional incapacity, colonial and war legacies, legitimacy gaps, economic informality, democratization and state-building provides an insight into durability and resilience of weak states in the global age.
Contests to reorganize the international system after the Cold War agree on the security threat of failed states: this book asks why.
The extra-legal effects of international and domestic war crimes trials continue to puzzle researchers and practitioners. In the former Yugoslav states, the legacy of conflict and issues of transitional justice remains central in politics, society and culture. This book provides a new theoretical and methodological approach to one of these puzzles: why universal human rights norms become distorted or undermined when they reach local publics. It investigates the social and cultural contexts that transitional justice processes take place in by looking at how emotional everyday narratives can hamper the spread of norms in society. In Croatia, these narratives define how the public understands the rule of law, history and minority rights.
Civil war inevitably causes shifts in state boundaries, demographics, systems of rule, and the bases of legitimate authority—many of the markers of national identity. Yet a shared sense of nationhood is as important to political reconciliation as the reconstruction of state institutions and economic security. After Civil War compares reconstruction projects in Bosnia, Cyprus, Finland, Greece, Kosovo, Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland, Spain, and Turkey in order to explore how former combatants and their supporters learn to coexist as one nation in the aftermath of ethnopolitical or ideological violence. After Civil War synthesizes research on civil wars, reconstruction, and nationa...
This book expands the current 'weapon of war' discourse on sexual violence, highlighting a wider spectrum of conflict-related violence against women.
Offers the first analysis of international courts' archives and of how these constitute the international community as a particular reality.
Over the last ten years, many commentators have tried to explain the bloody conflicts that tore Yugoslavia apart. But in all these attempts to make sense of the wars and ethnic violence, one crucial factor has been overlooked—the fundamental roles played by exile groups and émigré communities in fanning the flames of nationalism and territorial ambition. Based in the United States, Canada, Europe, Australia and South America, some groups helped provide the ideologies, the leadership, the money, and in many cases, the military hardware that fueled the violent conflicts. Atypical were the dissenting voices who drew upon their experiences in western democracies to stem the tide of war. In s...