{"title":"Global Victimhood: On the Charisma of the Victim in Transitional Justice Processes","authors":"Thorsten Bonacker","doi":"10.1515/wpsr-2013-0005","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Since the 1990s, transitional justice has become almost synonymous with the concern for the rights of victims. Compared with the Nuremberg Trials – in which victims did not even appear as witnesses – this is a major change and one for which an explanation will be sought here with recourse to neo-institutional research perspective. The core argument put forward in this article is that the change in transitional justice towards a stronger inclusion of victims could be explained as the result of the expansion of a rationalist world culture in which a model of victimhood is created and diffused worldwide, primarily through international organizations and NGOs. This notion of global victimhood developed only after World War II, following the global diffusion of human rights, the change in academic conceptions of traumatic experiences and the advocacy of International NGOs, so that the development of normative pressure on national transitional justice processes placed victims at the centre of processes dealing with the past.","PeriodicalId":37883,"journal":{"name":"World Political Science","volume":"298 2","pages":"129 - 97"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"2013-04-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1515/wpsr-2013-0005","citationCount":"26","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"World Political Science","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1515/wpsr-2013-0005","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"Social Sciences","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 26
Abstract
Abstract Since the 1990s, transitional justice has become almost synonymous with the concern for the rights of victims. Compared with the Nuremberg Trials – in which victims did not even appear as witnesses – this is a major change and one for which an explanation will be sought here with recourse to neo-institutional research perspective. The core argument put forward in this article is that the change in transitional justice towards a stronger inclusion of victims could be explained as the result of the expansion of a rationalist world culture in which a model of victimhood is created and diffused worldwide, primarily through international organizations and NGOs. This notion of global victimhood developed only after World War II, following the global diffusion of human rights, the change in academic conceptions of traumatic experiences and the advocacy of International NGOs, so that the development of normative pressure on national transitional justice processes placed victims at the centre of processes dealing with the past.
期刊介绍:
World Political Science (WPS) publishes translations of prize-winning articles nominated by prominent national political science associations and journals around the world. Scholars in a field as international as political science need to know about important political research produced outside the English-speaking world. Sponsored by the International Political Science Association (IPSA), the premiere global political science organization with membership from national assoications 50 countries worldwide WPS gathers together and translates an ever-increasing number of countries'' best political science articles, bridging the language barriers that have made this cutting-edge research inaccessible up to now. Articles in the World Political Science cover a wide range of subjects of interest to readers concerned with the systematic analysis of political issues facing national, sub-national and international governments and societies. Fields include Comparative Politics, International Relations, Political Sociology, Political Theory, Political Economy, and Public Administration and Policy. Anyone interested in the central issues of the day, whether they are students, policy makers, or other citizens, will benefit from greater familiarity with debates about the nature and solutions to social, economic and political problems carried on in non-English language forums.