TY - JOUR

T1 - The Transitional Justice and Foreign Policy Nexus

T2 - The Inefficient Causation of State Ontological Security-Seeking

AU - Mälksoo, Maria

PY - 2018/4/2

Y1 - 2018/4/2

N2 - How does an approach towards transitional justice produce preconditions for a country's international action, enabling certain policies and practices in the immediate neighborhood and international society at large? This article unpacks ontological security-seeking as a generic social mechanism in international politics, which makes it possible to productively conceptualize the connection between a state's transitional justice and foreign policies. Going beyond the dichotomy of transitional justice compliance and noncompliance by gauging the role of states’ subjective sense of self in driving their behavior, I develop an analytical framework to explain how state ontological security-seeking relates to major transitions and consequent state identity disjuncture, the ensuing politics of truth-and-justice-seeking, and its international resonance in framing and executing particular foreign policies. I offer a typology of the international consequences of states’ transitional justice politics, distinguishing between reflective and mnemonical security-oriented approaches, spawning cooperative and conflictual foreign policy behavior, respectively. The empirical purchase of the purported nexus is illustrated with the example of post-Soviet Russia's limited politics of accountability toward the repressions of its antecedent regime and its increasingly self-assertive and confrontational stance in contemporary international politics.

AB - How does an approach towards transitional justice produce preconditions for a country's international action, enabling certain policies and practices in the immediate neighborhood and international society at large? This article unpacks ontological security-seeking as a generic social mechanism in international politics, which makes it possible to productively conceptualize the connection between a state's transitional justice and foreign policies. Going beyond the dichotomy of transitional justice compliance and noncompliance by gauging the role of states’ subjective sense of self in driving their behavior, I develop an analytical framework to explain how state ontological security-seeking relates to major transitions and consequent state identity disjuncture, the ensuing politics of truth-and-justice-seeking, and its international resonance in framing and executing particular foreign policies. I offer a typology of the international consequences of states’ transitional justice politics, distinguishing between reflective and mnemonical security-oriented approaches, spawning cooperative and conflictual foreign policy behavior, respectively. The empirical purchase of the purported nexus is illustrated with the example of post-Soviet Russia's limited politics of accountability toward the repressions of its antecedent regime and its increasingly self-assertive and confrontational stance in contemporary international politics.

KW - Faculty of Social Sciences

KW - foreign policy

KW - inefficient causation

KW - ontological security

KW - Russia

KW - transitional justice

UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/isr/viy006

U2 - 10.1093/isr/viy006

DO - 10.1093/isr/viy006

M3 - Journal article

VL - 21

SP - 373

EP - 397

JO - International Studies Review

JF - International Studies Review

SN - 1521-9488

IS - 3

ER -