How Things Work

Part of the motivation for this project stems from the dearth of understanding about how to assess transitional justice interventions. One of the underlying reasons why assessments have proven to be so difficult is that there is, in fact, a lack of understanding about how the interventions themselves may be thought to work. Prior to any effort to measure the effectiveness of a mechanism, understanding how, in principle, the mechanism can be thought to have any effects at all is necessary.

Surprisingly, almost no attention has been paid to the articulation of accounts of how, precisely, transitional justice interventions can have the effects often attributed to them. This project is designed to contribute to closing this gap. Its intended goal is to contribute to our understanding of:

• how transitional justice interventions work
• how they achieve any effects
• and the factors on which their efficacy depends

This will be a year-long project involving a small group of social scientists and transitional justice practitioners.

The first meeting of the project took place in April 2008 in New York City where the contours of the project were established. An author's meeting will take place in October 2008 in Florence, Italy.

(Updated July 2008)