Transitional Justice and Other Fields: The Intersection of Concepts, Theories and Empirics

Transitional Justice has been described variously as a field, as epistemic community, a set of practices and a theoretically challenged academic pursuit. Many scholars, practitioners and policy-makers have spent the last thirty years not only establishing transitional justice as a field in its own right but also as an integral component of intersecting fields, such as democratisation, international law, human rights, conflict resolution, post-war reconstruction, development, peacebuilding and natural disasters. However, there has been limited work on exploring the nuances of transitional justice and its intersection with connected fields. Questions of sequencing, complementarity, overlap and competition for resources on the ground are posed but not often answered. In this Section we invite Panels and Papers which explore the ways in which transitional justice intersects with connected fields and how each may shape, contribute to and challenge the other. Questions addressed may include, but are certainly not limited to, how attention to transitional justice may enhance work in other areas, how concepts and theories developed in other fields may be applied to increase understanding of transitional justice processes and outcomes, how contradictions may arise in policy-making in contexts of limited resources and varied needs, how the diversity of transitional justice mechanisms invites approaches from other fields, and whether transitional justice can ever been seen as ‘stand-alone’. Panels and Papers which focus on particular themes, questions, or case studies and regions are welcome and we seek a variety of methodological and theoretical approaches. Finally, the Section Co-Chairs wish to encourage early career as well as established scholars to participate in ECPR General Conferences and Workshops. This Section aims to place scholars at different stages of their career in conversation with each other, in order to encourage, inspire and challenge a new generation of political scientists.