The last two decades have witnessed a major increase in the use of transitional justice interventions, predicated, in part, on longstanding assumptions that such interventions may be crucial to processes of post-conflict peacebuilding and reconciliation. However, current understanding as to how these interventions are causally linked to reconciliation has remained under-theorized in existing scholarship. Building upon a synthesis of insights from social psychology and recent conflict transformation literature, this paper explores a theoretical framework capable of tracing the linkages between identity construction, justice, and post-conflict reconciliation in deeply divided societies. It introduces a new ‘social learning’ model, suggesting that transitional justice interventions will be most successful in promoting intergroup reconciliation to the degree that they are able to catalyze crucial processes of instrumental, socioemotional, and distributive learning amongst former antagonists by way of promoting contact, dialogue, truth, justice, and the amelioration of structural and material inequalities – all factors identified in existing scholarship as necessary, if not sufficient, conditions for post-conflict reconciliation in divided societies. The utility of this model is explored through a critical examination of the very different transitional justice approaches employed in Northern Ireland and South Africa, drawing from four months of qualitative field research conducted in 2008-2009 (including a series of 85 in-depth expert interviews). Reflecting on these findings, the paper concludes by considering the implications of this analysis for ‘best practices’ in the transitional justice interventions adopted in future divided societies.
