Political Theory Commons^™

Piacular Subjectivity And Contested Narrative In The Imre Nagy Memorials, Karl P. Benziger, Richard R. Weiner

Faculty Publications

The funeral of Imre Nagy on June 16, 1989 can be seen as a critical moment in the Hungarian transition to a democratic republic as it explicitly undermined the moral and political authority of the communist government then in power. This Nagy memorial signified a longing for a national identity tied to the spirit of republicanism that had been thwarted in 1956 and had roots going back to 1848. The unity of purpose displayed by the Hungarian people at the funeral brings to mind Emile Durkheim_s analysis of piaculum and the conscience collective. This is what the sociologist, Robert Bellah …

Hijacked Justice: Domestic Appropriation Of International Norms, Jelena Subotić

Human Rights & Human Welfare

This paper explores the domestic politics of international norm diffusion, using the global transmission of transitional justice norms as the empirical context of the research. Applying sociological institutionalism as the principal theoretical framework, I argue that the motivation of states to adopt international models of transitional justice has changed over time. The transitional justice norm - that posits that war crimes and massive human rights abuses must be dealt with in a proper legal setting and not through “victors’ justice” or impunity - was institutionalized in large part as the result of a strong domestic demand for transitional justice in …

The Opacity Of Transparency, Mark Fenster

Mark Fenster