Costs of Justice

Brian K. Grodsky

Description

In The Costs of Justice, Brian K. Grodsky provides qualitative analyses of how transitional justice processes have evolved in diverse ways in postcommunist Poland, Croatia, Serbia, and Uzbekistan, by examining the decision-making processes and goals of those actors who contributed to key transitional justice policy decisions. Grodsky draws on extensive interviews with key political figures, human rights leaders, and representatives of various international, state, and nongovernmental bodies, as well as detailed analysis of international and local news reports, to offer a systematic and qualitatively compelling account of transitional justice from the perspective of activists who, at the end of a previous regime, were suddenly transformed from downtrodden victim to empowered judge.

Grodsky challenges the argument that transitional justice in post-repressive states is largely a function of the relative power of new versus old elites. He maintains that a new regime's transitional justice policy is closely linked to its capacity to provide goods and services expected by constituents, not to political power struggles. In introducing this goods variable, so common to broad political analysis but largely overlooked in the transitional justice debate, Grodsky argues that we must revise our understanding of transitional justice. It is not an exceptional issue; it is but one of many political decisions faced by leaders in a transition state.

Sujets

• Political Process
• Political Science
• General officer
• Peace
• General
• Paix

Informations

• Publié par: University of Notre Dame Press
• Date de parution: 15 janvier 2011
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780268080648
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 3 Mo

Extrait

The Costs of JusticeCON T E M P OR A RY EU ROPE A N P OLITI C S A N D S O CIE T Y
Anthony M. Messina, series editorThe
C O S T S of
J U S T I C E
How New Leaders Respond
to Previous Rights Abuses
B R I A N K . G R O D S K Y
University of Notre Dame Press
Notre Dame, IndianaCopyright © 2010 by the University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, Indiana 46556
www.undpress.nd.edu
All Rights Reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Grodsky, Brian K., 1974–
The costs of justice : how new leaders respond to previous rights abuses /
Brian K. Grodsky.
p. cm. — (Contemporary European politics and society)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-268-02977-7 (pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-268-02977-6 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Transitional justice—Case studies. 2. Human rights—Case studies.
3. Transitional justice—Europe, Eastern. 4. Human rights—Europe,
Eastern. 5. Transitional justice—Uzbekistan 6. Human rights—
Uzbekistan. 7. Post-communism—Case studies. I. Title.
JC571. G7831 2010
320.01'1—dc22
2010024331
∞The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability
of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the
Council on Library Resources.To my wife, Gosia, and daughter, Ania,
whose support has made each page possible.Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction
What Is Transitional Justice and Why Should We Care? 1
P A R T I
C H A P T E R 1
Explaining Justice: What Are the Key Determinants
of Transitional Justice Policy? 13
C H A P T E R 2
The Justice Spectrum: A New Methodological
Approach to Studying Transitional Justice 35
C H A P T E R 3
The Peculiarities of Postcommunist Justice:
Addressing Lustration 58
C H A P T E R 4
The Method of Study: Using Qualitative Data to
Uncover the Path of Justice 75viii | C ontents
.
P A R T I I
C H A P T E R 5
Poland: Justice, Economics, and the End of Solidarity 95
C H A P T E R 6
Serbia and Montenegro: Justice as Yugoslavia’s
Most Valuable Foreign Export? 123
C H A P T E R 7
Croatia: When the Cost of Justice Is Too High 149
C H A P T E R 8
Uzbekistan: Exploiting Justice Today,
Facing Justice Tomorrow? 171
C H A P T E R 9
Transitional Justice in a Cross-National Perspective 190
C H A P T E R 10
Reassessing How We Think about Justice 214
Notes 228
List of Interviews 305
Poland 305
Serbia and Montenegro 308
Croatia 311
Uzbekistan 313
Washington, D.C. 316
Select Bibliography 318
Index 335Acknowledgments
I would especially like to thank Zvi Gitelman and Bill Zimmerman for
their extraordinarily insightful comments and advice during the fieldwork
and writing of this book. I would also like to thank for their helpful
comments at various stages Susan Waltz, Monika Nalepa, Sarah Croco, Tom
Flores, Joel Simmons, Jana von Stein, Rob Salmond, Devin Hagerty, Eileen
Babbitt, Vladimir Tismaneanu, Ed Schatz, Mackenzie Whipps, and
Barbara Kore menos, as well as the anonymous reviewers for the University of
Notre Dame Press.
Also I would like to express my considerable debt to those
organizations that have provided me with the financial support that has made this
book possible. These include the following awards: Woodrow Wilson
International Center for Scholars, East European Studies Research Scholar;
United States Department of Education, Fulbright-Hays Doctoral
Dissertation Research Abroad Program; American Council of Learned Societies
Dissertation Fellowship; Harold Jacobson Fellowship, Political Science
Department, University of Michigan; ACTR/ACCELS (American
Councils) Combined Research and Language Training Program—Uzbekistan;
Academy for Educational Development, National Security Education
Program, David L. Boren Graduate Fellowship; Center for Russian and East
European Studies Research, Internship and Fellowship Program Grant;
and a Thesis Grant, Political Science Department, University of Michigan.
ixx | A ck now ledg ments
Finally, I am most grateful to the many interviewees who kindly and
graciously gave their time and thoughts to me as I travelled through Poland,
Uzbekistan, Serbia, and Croatia in a search for understanding the process of
transitional justice in each country. From freedom fighters of yesterday to
those still facing repressive regimes today, these extraordinarily busy and
influential individuals shared with me their personal stories and the stories of
their countries. These men and women have my great appreciation, and my
good wishes go out to those for whom the transition they seek has yet to
materialize.Introduction
What Is Transitional Justice
and Why Should We Care?
The dramatic end of the Cold War in the late 1980s marked a
fascinating twist in the study of transitional justice, those responses to a former
re gime’s repressive acts following a change in political systems. First, the
death of ideological bipolarity allowed for the creation of new norms and
the strengthening of older but long-ignored ones with regard to justice.
Countries emerging from dictatorships in the last period of the “third wave”
were no longer so constrained in their internal decisions by the broader geo -
political factors that had dogged their predecessors. Second, the sheer scale
of communism’s collapse led to an unprecedented number of states—more
than two dozen—suddenly faced with accounting for decades of
dictatorship. Third, the trajectories of these postcommunist states demonstrated
the tentativeness of democratization, upon which transitional justice is
ostensibly based. While some postcommunist states immediately lurched
in the direction of free-market democracies, other nominally new de moc -
racies (that is, those where members of the old regime continued to rule,
claiming to be on a new political trajectory) clamped down rather than let
up on opposition, and still other states disintegrated into bloody regional
and civil wars that further complicated any reckoning with the past.
12 | T H E C O S T S O F J U S T I C E
This book, based largely on elite interviews and media analyses
conducted in the four postcommunist countries of Poland, Serbia, Croatia, and
Uzbekistan, draws on the experiences of a diverse group of states from one
of the most monumental political transitions in recent history in order to
explore a fundamental question: What determines how a (nominally) new
regime will pursue transitional justice following a period of repression? This
question is an important component of the broader democratization
discourse. Yet at a time when the U.S. government spends hundreds of
millions of dollars annually to promote democratization and human rights
accountability around the world, we know relatively little about how to shape
the desired outcome. The American-backed trial of Saddam Hussein in
2005– 2006, largely criticized as a miscarriage of justice and an inspiration
for Sunni insurgents in Iraq, highlights the weight of this dilemma.
The Saddam Hussein trial is also a reminder of the staying power of
transitional justice. Scarcely a day passes before another story appears in the
national press about commemorations for victims of injustice, a truth
commission’s newest findings, or the next ex-dictator standing trial. At a time of
momentous international challenges, from global warming and pervasive
hunger to terrorism and war, this attention is not frivolous, but rather a sign
of the times. A glance at the U.S. State Department’s Web site is enough to
realize that dialogue concerning transitional justice has reached a new level.
The primary U.S. foreign policy body identifies among its human rights
objectives the need to “promote the rule of law, seek accountability, and change
1cultures of impunity.” To back up these words, the Office of War Crimes
Issues has been established to pressure states to ensure criminal justice for
their worst offenders. The State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic
Security, in turn, offers bounties for war criminals. The U.S. government’s $5
million reward for the (recently captured) former Bosnian Serb president, Rado -
2van Karadžić, is equal to that paid for many terrorists on the very same site.
Cynics might still question the determination of U.S. officials who
profess to care about transitional justice, particularly given lingering
ques3tions concerning how and why it fits into the “national interest.” Yet
official U.S. positions in this sphere are symptomatic of a more global
phenomenon. The international community is increasingly speaking out on
the need to address past abuses. While intergovernmental bodies have
always been somewhat equivocal about the need for justice versus peace, theIntroduction | 3
United Nations (UN) and the Intra-American Commission on Human
Rights (IACHR), in particular, have condemned impunity and begun to
view domestic amnesties as inconsistent with international human rights
4norms and laws. The Cold War’s explosive end resulted in the first
international tribunal since Nuremberg and Tokyo: the International Criminal
Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (1993), which was quickly followed
by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (1994). Since then,
the United Nations has taken an active role in establishing and supporting
other criminal trials in East Timor (2000), Sierra Leone (2002), and Cam -
bodia (2003). This process culminated in the recent establishment of the
International Criminal Court, designed in part to encourage and enable
5criminal accountability for the world’s worst violators.
This trend is also evidenced by local courts’ ever-increasing attempts to
try crimes that took place at home or on foreign soil. This might involve
stripping local rights abusers from the old regime of self-granted
immunity and pursuing criminal cases against them in courts on the terrain that
6they once controlled. It also includes a concept called “universal
jurisdiction,” which enables (or may even, at least in principle, require) states to
pursue criminal cases for certain crimes, no matter where or against whom
7they