Section on ‘Good Governance through Transitional Justice?‘ –2015 ECPR General Conference in Montreal, Canada.

At the ECPR general conference in Montreal, the ECPR Standing Group on Transitional Justice and Human Rights organised a section on “Good Governance through Transitional Justice”.

Transitional justice policies explicitly aim to (re)-build good governance and democratic institutions in contexts of transition. However, little research has been done in drawing the link between transitional justice and good governance. Do transitional justice measures spoil or promote establishing a rule of law in any given society? Do these measures predominantly address past injustice or also and equally address the ways ahead? Can trials, commissions of inquiry, memorials, reparations or restitutions de facto help to re-build civic trust in new democratic institutions and thus leverage their performance and stabilize them, or not?

The section brought together established scholars in the field as well as young scholars and early career researchers to discuss these issues. The four panels, which took place on 28th and 29th August 2015, explored different aspects of the section’s theme on the basis of comparative analysis, single case studies and the analysis of interactions between the global and the local. Transitional justice contexts presented at the conference included South Sudan, Egypt, Uganda, Côte d’Ivoire, Central Europe, Aceh and Cambodia.

An overview of the section and uploaded papers can be found here: http://ecpr.eu/Events/SectionDetails.aspx?SectionID=428&EventID=94

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