Transitional Criminal Justice in Post-Dictatorial and Post-Conflict Societies

States that are in transition after a dictatorship or a violent conflict face formidable challenges concerning accountability for human rights violations. This edited collection considers the timely question of criminal justice as a method of addressing state violence committed by non-democratic regimes. The book’s main objectives concern a fresh, contemporary, and critical analysis of transitional criminal justice as a concept and its related measures, beginning with the initiatives that have been put in place with the fall of the Communist regimes in Europe in 1989.

The project argues for re-thinking and re-visiting filters that scholars use to interpret main issues of transitional criminal justice, such as:

1) the relationship between judicial accountability, democratisation and politics in transitional societies; 2) the role of successor trials in re-writing history; 3) the interaction between domestic and external actors and specific initiatives in shaping transitional justice and democratic accountability; and 4) the paradox of time in delivering transitional justice and enhancing accountability.

In order to accomplish this, the volume considers cases of domestic accountability from different geographical areas, such as Europe, Asia and Africa, and from various periods of time. In this way the approach, which investigates space and time-lines in key examples, also takes into account a longitudinal study of transitional criminal justice itself.