Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Democratization and Transitional Justice

2008; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 15; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/13510340801991114

1743-890X

Mark Arenhövel,

International Law and Human Rights

Abstract Any country which attempts to establish accountability for past abuses of human rights during the process of democratization faces political, judicial, and ethical problems. With regard to politics, the question of which transitional justice measures are appropriate, functional, and feasible has to be decided for every individual case. A judicial approach has to decide which judicial standards to apply and how to justify prosecution. Finally, the ethical dilemmas of dealing with historical injustices have to be understood. There are no ready-made concepts to define guilt and justice. In many cases it is even difficult to tell the victims from the perpetrators. This study examines the different strategies subsumed under the term 'transitional justice' used by emerging democracies to deal with a legacy of human rights abuses. It explores the problems and challenges posed by different mechanisms of reconciliation and societal reintegration. While existing analyses of the contribution that transitional justice measures make to the process of social re-integration stress the importance of consensus among citizens and social groups for the emergence of trust and solidarity, this study suggests also thinking about how conflicts over competing 'truths' can help to build social capital and reconciliation. Noting a global diffusion of international legal norms, which means at least formal universal acceptance of basic rights and judicial procedures, it is argued that international justice cannot be a substitute for transitional justice measures taken by the domestic regime itself. Keywords: democratizationtransitional justicetruth commission ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The author would like to thank Wolfgang Merkel, Sonja Grimm, and Andreas Vasilache for helpful criticism, comments and suggestions. Any errors are mine alone. Notes 1. For a discussion of different paths toward democratization see Alfred Stepan, 'Paths Toward Redemocratization: Theoretical and Comparative Considerations', in Guillermo O'Donnell, Philippe C. Schmitter, and Laurence Whitehead Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Comparative Perspectives, Vol. 3 (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988), pp. 64–84. 2. Guillermo O'Donnell and Philippe C. Schmitter, Transitions from Authoritarian Rule. Tentative Conclusions about Uncertain Democracies, Vol. 4. (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991), p. 30. 3. Ibid., p. 32. 4. See Julie Mostov, 'The Use and Abuse of History in Eastern Europe: A Challenge for the 90s', Constellations, Vol. 4, No. 3 (Jan. 1998), pp. 376–86. 5. Katherine Verdery, 'Whither Nation and Nationalism?', Daedalus, Vol. 122, No. 3 (Summer 1993), p. 38. 6. Ivaylo Ditchev gives an impressive overview about the 'technology of identity building' in Eastern Europe after the demise of communism. See Ivaylo Ditchev 'The Eros of Identity', in Dusan Bjelic and Obrad Savic (eds), Balkan as Metaphor. Between Globalization and Fragmentation (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002), pp. 235–50, quotation on p. 241. 7. See Anne Sa'adah, Germany's Second Chance. Trust, Justice, and Democratization (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), pp. 3–4. 8. This point was strongly advanced by former Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, stating that 'establishing the truth about what happened in Bosnia is essential to … national reconciliation'. Quoted in Gary Jonathan Bass, Stay the Hand of Vengeance: The Politics of War Crimes Tribunals (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), p. 263. 9. Sa'adah (note 7), p. 13. 10. Quotation in Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars. A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations (New York: Basic Books, 1977), p. 298. 11. See Gary Smith, 'Ein normatives Niemandsland? Zwischen Gerechtigkeit und Versöhnungspolitik in jungen Demokratien', in Gary Smith and Avishai Margalit (eds), Amnestie oder die Politik der Erinnerung (Frankfurt/M: Suhrkamp, 1997), pp. 12–13. 12. Adam Przeworski, 'Problems in the Study of Transitions to Democracy', in Guillermo ÓDonnell, Philippe C. Schmitter, and Laurence Whitehead (eds), Transitions from Authoritarian Rule. Comparative Perspectives. Vol. 3 (Baltimore, MD: The John Hopkins University Press, 1988), p. 61. 13. Another constraint to transitional justice in Spain might have been that in the mid-1970s the international discourse about collective memory was not as acknowledged as 20 years later, when a new interest in Spanish history emerged among civil society activists. 14. Javier Pradera, a prominent Spanish journalist, expressed a quite critical opinion about the new interest in interpreting history in a new light, see Javier Pradera, 'La Huella del Regimen', El Pais, 20 Nov. 2005. Quoted in Walther L. Bernecker and Sören Brinkmann, Kampf der Erinnerungen. Der spanische Bürgerkrieg in Politik und Gesellschaft (Nettersheim: Verlag Graswurzelrevolution, 2006), p. 342. 15. Mark Osiel, Mass Atrocity, Collective Memory, and the Law (New Brunswick: Transactions Publishers 1993), p. 3. 16. Luc Huyse, 'Justice after Transition: On the Choice Successor Elites Make in Dealing with the Past', in Neil J. Kritz (ed.), Transitional Justice, How Emerging Democracies Reckon with Former Regimes. Vol.1, General Considerations (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 1995), p. 339. 17. Quotation in Osiel (note 15), p. 15. Osiel quotes from Carlos Santiago Nino's original manuscript. The quotation does not appear in the posthumous publication: Carlos Santiago Nino, Radical Evil on Trial (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996). 18. See Henry Rousso, The Vichy Syndrome: History and Memory in France since 1944 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1991), p. 210. 19. Paula K. Speck, 'The Trial of the Argentine Juntas', University of Miami Inter-American Law Review, Vol. 18, No. 491 (1987), p. 533. 20. See in particular Bruce Ackerman, 'Constitutional Politics/Constitutional Law', Yale Law Journal, Vol. 99, No. 3 (1989), pp. 453–546; Bruce Ackerman, We the People: Foundations (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991); Bruce Ackerman, We the People: Transformations (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998). 21. Talking about the temporal framing of transitional justice, the second question, 'Up to which future point in time is legal action to be taken?', has to be considered as seriously as the first question. It involves the difficult decision, of eventually lifting or upholding the existing statute of limitation. 22. Quoted in Luc Huyse (note 16), p. 344. See also Tina Rosenberg, Die Rache der Geschichte (München: Hanser Verlag, 1997). 23. Quoted in Stephen Kinzer, 'We Weren't Following Orders, but the Currents of the Cold War', New York Times, 24 March 1996, p. 16. 24. Jon Elster, Die Akten schliessen. Recht und Gerechtigkeit nach dem Ende der Diktaturen (Frankfurt/M.: Campus Verlag, 2005), pp. 238–43. 25. Ibid., p. 242. 26. This bias may have its origin in the unexpressed intention to overcome the legacy of a somewhat reluctant confrontation with Nazi crimes in the early phase of the Federal Republic of Germany after 1945. This motive was reflected in comparisons between the GDR and Nazi Germany by leading representatives of the West German elites. 27. See Richard Gwyn, 'International Law should not be Victor's Justice', The Toronto Star, 4 July 2001, p. 14. 28. Nino (note 17), p. 90. 29. Carlos Santiago Nino, 'Transition to Democracy, Corporatism and Constitutional Reform in Latin America', University of Miami Law Review, Vol. 44, No. 1 (1989), p. 136. 30. Jack Snyder and Leslie Vinjamuri, 'Trials and Errors: Principle and Pragmatism in Strategies of International Justice', International Security, Vol. 28, No. 3 (2003/04), pp. 5–44. 31. During the last 35 years about 30 truth commissions have been installed in 28 states. 32. A Yugoslavian truth and reconciliation commission for Serbia and Montenegro was established in 2001, but it dissolved within two years without having produced any results. 33. See Martha Minow, Between Vengeance and Forgiveness: Facing History after Genocide and Mass Violence (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1998); Nino (note 17); José Zalaquett, 'Balancing Ethical Imperatives and Political Constraints: The Dilemma of New Democracies Confronting Past Human Rights Violations', Hastings Law Journal, Vol. 43, No. 6 (1992), pp. 1425–38. 34. Definition taken from the website of the International Center for Transitional Justice, available at www.ictj.org/en/tj/ (accessed 10 Aug. 2007). 35. See Diane F. Orentlicher, '"Settling Accounts" Revisited: Reconciling Global Norms with Local Agency', The International Journal of Transitional Justice, Vol. 1, No. 1 (2007), pp. 10–11. 36. The United Nations Development Programme is supporting transitional justice for over a decade. See UNDP and Transitional Justice: An Overview, January 2006, available at www.undp.org/cpr/docu ments/jssr/trans_justice/UNDP_Transitional_Justice_Overview_2006.doc (accessed 9 Nov. 2007). For a more theoretical approach see Chandra Lekha Sriram, 'International Law, International Relations Theory and Post-Atrocity Justice: Towards a Genuine Dialogue', International Affairs, Vol. 82, No. 3 (2006), pp. 467–78; John Torpey (ed.), Politics and the Past: On Repairing Historical Injustices (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003). 37. Judith N. Shklar, Legalism: Law, Morals, and Political Trials (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986), p. 156. 38. See Claudia Koonz, 'Between Memory and Oblivion: Concentration Camps in German Memory', in John R. Gillis (ed.), Commemorations (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), p. 262. 39. Orentlicher (note 35), p. 15. 40. This is the point of Paul Chevigny, 'The Limitations of Universal Jurisdiction', available at http://www.globalpolicy.org/opinion/2006/03universal.htm (accessed 10 Oct. 2007). 41. See Chandra Lekha Sriram and Amy Ross, 'Geographies of Crime and Justice: Contemporary Transitional Justice and the Creation of 'Zones of Impunity', The International Journal of Transitional Justice, Vol. 1, No. 1 (2007), pp. 45–65. 42. See the Preamble of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, available at http://www.icc-cpi.int/library/about/officialjournal/Rome_Statute_English.pdf (accessed 13 March 2008). 43. Lekha Sriram and Ross (note 41), p. 46. 44. Orentlicher (note 35), p. 18. 45. See Vaclav Havel, New Year's Address to the Nation, Prague, 1 January 1990, available at http://old. hrad.cz/president/ Havel/speeches/1990/0101_uk.html (accessed 9 Nov. 2007), also quoted in Andrew Nagorski, The Birth of Freedom: Shaping Lives and Societies in the New Eastern Europe (New York: Simon and Schuster 1993), p. 89. 46. Diane Orentlicher (note 35), p. 17, rightly comments that these developments are still inadequate, but they do mark a sea change in public awareness. 47. Jacques Derrida, Gesetzeskraft. Der mystische Grund der Autorität (Frankfurt/M: Suhrkamp 1991). 48. David Mendeloff, 'Truth-Seeking, Truth-Telling, and Postconflict Peacebuilding: Curb the Enthusiasm?' International Studies Review, Vol. 6, No. 3 (2004), p. 376. 49. I borrow this argument from Andrew Arato, 'Post Sovereign Constitution Making and Democratic Legitimacy', in Tine Stein, Hubertus Buchstein, and Claus Offe (eds), Souveränität, Recht, Moral. Die Grundlagen politischer Gemeinschaft (Frankfurt/M: Campus Verlag, 2007), pp. 92–105. 50. Michael Walzer, 'The Civil Society Argument', in Ronald Beiner (ed.), Theorizing Citizenship (New York: Albany State University Press, 1995), pp. 169–70. 51. See Osiel (note 15), p. 9. 52. This is elaborated in great depth in chapter 2, 'Solidarity through Civil Dissensus', in Osiel (note 15), pp. 36–55. 53. Ibid., p. 17. 54. Lewis A. Coser, The Functions of Social Conflict (New York: The Free Press, 1956); Georg Simmel, Untersuchungen über die Formen der Vergesellschaftung (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1908); Albert O. Hirschman, 'Social Conflicts as Pillars of Democratic Market Society', Political Theory, Vol. 22, No. 2 (1994), pp. 203–18. 55. Juan J. Linz and Alfred Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation: Southern Europe, South America and Post-Communist Europe (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996); Francisco E. González and Desmond King, 'The State and Democratization: The United States in Comparative Perspective', British Journal of Political Science, Vol. 34, No. 2 (2004), pp. 193–210. 56. In February 2008 Kosovo declared itself an independent state. Its independence has been recognized by some Western governments. 57. Ahmad Nader Nadery, 'Peace or Justice? Transitional Justice in Afghanistan' International Journal of Transitional Justice, Vol. 1, No. 1 (2007), p. 174. 58. Ibid., p. 175. 59. See the contribution of Astri Suhrke in this collection. 60. Ibid., p. 178. 61. For more information on the Afghan case see Suhrke in this collection. 62. Jon Elster (note 24) starts his analysis of transitional justice in Athens in the fifth century BC to give a very early example that in transitional justice, nations can learn from experience. The two consecutive restorations of democracy in Athens where closely connected, the second being directly shaped by what was perceived as excessive severity in the first. 63. Elster (note 24), p. 19. 64. Ibid. 65. Nino (note 17), p. 120. 66. Timothy Garton Ash, 'Central Europe: The Present Past', New York Review of Books, 13 July 1995, pp. 21–2. Additional informationNotes on contributorsMark Arenhövel Mark Arenhövel is Visiting Professor at the St Kliment Ohridski University of Sofia and Academic Director of the Center for German and European Studies in Sofia (ZEDES-Germanicum).