Your Country, My Rules: Can Military Occupations Create Successful Transitions?

Abstract

This paper argues against the idea that successful transitions can be created in the context of transformative belligerent occupations. It explains that given the prevailing interests of occupying powers and their tendency to ignore or underestimate the needs and political participation of the local population in the transition process, military occupations are ill-suited for applying precepts of transitional justice. Instead, it calls for the implementation of either international or multilateral approaches to transition processes in times of occupation, both in the form of international administration of territories or the operationalization of good practices and jus post bellum concepts. In the end, however, the paper recognizes that the political situation in today’s world makes these alternatives difficult to implement in practice, even if they are desirable lege ferenda.