Justice and Political Conflicts

With their aim of constructing unified accounts of (global) justice, political theorists often disregard both: potential conflicts on the conceptual level between justice and other moral values; as well as real world political struggles over conflicting ideas of justice. At the same time, empirical research on conflict rarely focuses on justice as a motive driving conflict – even though behavioural research provides evidence that human action is informed by a fundamental sense of justice and fairness. The section seeks to put the focus on justice conflicts understood, on the one hand, as conceptual and normative challenges for political theory and, on the other hand, as empirical phenomena that are largely overlooked although they arise regularly and in various constellations. Perceived injustices; collisions between distinct requirements of justice (e.g. procedural vs. distributive); or between differing substantive conceptions (e.g. secular vs. religious); as well as possible trade-offs between justice and other values (transitional justice vs. peace) all can – and do – lead to political struggles, including violent conflicts. The section’s goal is mutual inspiration between political theory and conflict research by examining questions such as how ideas of justice impact conflicts and their settlements, how justice conflicts play out in intergovernmental organisations or how non-state justice entrepreneurs affect conflict evolution. Of particular interest are those empirical fields where struggles for justice have been proven prone to violence, including the exploitation of natural resources or the strife for transitional justice. Normative-theoretical questions may arise for example in the theory of just war or where legal and moral demands of justice come into conflict.