Post-Communist Transitional Justice: Lessons from Twenty-Five Years of Experience

Cambridge University Press
Edition: Illustrated, 2/26/2015
EAN 9781107065567, ISBN10: 1107065569

Hardcover, 358 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 x 2.1 cm
Language: English

Taking stock of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the collapse of the communist regimes of Central and Eastern Europe, this volume explores how these societies have grappled with the serious human rights violations of past regimes. It focuses on the most important factors that have shaped the nature, speed, and sequence of transitional justice programs in the period spanning the revolutions that brought about the collapse of the communist dictatorships and the consolidation of new democratic regimes. Contributors explain why leaders made certain choices, discuss the challenges they faced, and explore the role of under-studied actors and grassroots strategies. Written by recognized experts with an unparalleled grasp of the region's communist and post-communist reality, this volume addresses far-reaching reckoning, redress, and retribution policy choices. It is an engaging, carefully crafted volume, which covers a wide variety of cases and discusses key transitional justice theories using both qualitative and quantitative research methods.

Part I. Determinants of Transitional Justice
1. Transitional justice and political goods Brian Grodsky
2. Transitional justice as electoral politics Robert Austin
3. Explaining late lustration programs
lessons from the Polish case Aleks Szczerbiak
Part II. The Impact of Transitional Justice
4. The adoption and impact of transitional justice Moira Lynch and Bridget Marchesi
5. Transitional justice effects in the Czech Republic Roman David
Part III. Key Challenges
6. The timing of transitional justice measures Cynthia M. Horne
7. The challenge of competing pasts Monica Ciobanu
8. Beyond the national
pathways of diffusion Helga A. Welsh
9. The mythologizing of communist violence Jelena Subotic
Part IV. History, Justice, and Public Memory
10. Post-communist truth commissions
between transitional justice and the politics of history Andrew Beattie
11. Public memory, commemoration, and transitional justice
reconfiguring the past in public space Duncan Light and Craig Young
12. Stories we tell
documentary theater, performance, and justice in transition Olivera Simic
13. Vigilante justice and unofficial truth projects Lavinia Stan.