Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Date of Degree

9-2025

Document Type

Doctoral Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Program

Political Science

Advisor

George Andreopoulos

Committee Members

Stephanie Golob

John Torpey

Subject Categories

International Relations

Keywords

yugoslavia, serbia, croatia, transitional justice

Abstract

In the post-Cold War era, transitional justice emerged as a method to reconcile societies that had suffered large-scale human rights abuses through autocratic oppression and/or intra-state conflicts. During this time, the concept of what transitional justice meant and what problems it could resolve expanded exponentially. However, the empirical results of such initiatives have been mixed. Many states subject to transitional justice initiatives have failed to liberalize or develop domestic governance capacities. Why do transitional justice initiatives fail even under the most favorable conditions?

The most common answer to this question is that these initiatives are often ineffective, hindered by a lack of domestic internalization, a failure to account for local context, and a fundamental distance from the lives of ordinary civilians living in post-conflict and post-authoritarian societies. The purpose of this dissertation, however, is to challenge this perspective. I suggest that transitional justice initiatives fail not because they are ineffective, but rather because they are counterproductive, relative to the goal of establishing and consolidating transitions to liberal democratic regimes. This dissertation argues that transitional justice initiatives may in some cases impede, rather than promote, regime liberalization and social reconciliation.

To make this argument, the study proposes three causal mechanisms through which transitional justice initiatives create perverse outcomes. First, there is an element of moral hazard, specifically that direct external intervention provides a “safety net” such that political strategies based on existing antagonisms, which might otherwise produce state collapse, remain rewarding. Second, transitional justice initiatives may create a normalization of the status quo, re-entrenching existing power relations and patterns of corruption and illiberal governance. Third, the structural nature of transitional justice initiatives creates a dilemma of normative diffusion, in that transitional justice initiatives often are built around fundamentally illiberal principles opposed to those that transitional justice initiatives are meant to promote. Using a combination of within-case and cross-case analysis, I propose that these three causal mechanisms create counter-productive outcomes, as illustrated through a case study of the Western Balkans region.

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