The Transitional Justice and Foreign Policy Nexus: The Inefficient Causation of State Ontological Security-Seeking
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The Transitional Justice and Foreign Policy Nexus : The Inefficient Causation of State Ontological Security-Seeking. / Mälksoo, Maria.
In: International Studies Review, Vol. 21, No. 3, 02.04.2018, p. 373-397.Research output: Contribution to journal › Journal article › Research › peer-review
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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 -
ID: 284504946