No abstract

In June 2002, the Republic of Rwanda embarked on an extraordinary experiment in transitional justice, inaugurating the pilot phase of a new participatory justice system called Inkiko-Gacaca. This article-the result of 8 weeks of research involving interviews with government and nongovernmental organization officials, local judges, and prisoners, and extensive observations of the Inkiko-Gacaca process in several different rural communities-explores the system's potential for healing inter-group conflict through a collaborative process of establishing common social and moral norms. The historical and theoretical background of Inkiko-Gacaca is followed by an in-depth case study of 3 communities. Relating intergroup contact theory to the actual experiences of Rwandans participating in this transitional justice system, we emphasize the need to revise the theory's often-implied assumption of homogeneity in participant perspectives. This analysis illustrates 4 very different levels of trust at which Rwandans participate in the Inkiko-Gacaca system, and the dangers, as well as the positive potential, that this wide distribution of perceptions implies. Ultimately, the research indicates some specific ways in which Inkiko-Gacaca could address the concerns of its most disillusioned participants, to help ensure that its contribution to the process of social reconstruction in Rwanda is a positive one.

In recent years scholars from neighboring disciplines have emphasized the importance of conceptual rigor in designing, administering, and interpreting research in the social sciences. Drawing on this new conceptualism, this article analyzes the much talked about notion of “reconciliation.” In an effort at structuring a useful debate on possible departures from historic injustice, the article formulates a systematized concept of reconciliation based on the multitude of meanings contained in theory and practice. It distinguishes varieties of reconciliation, organizing these varieties into types and subtypes. The article argues that while most varieties of reconciliation emanate from the same root concept, the various outer layers of meaning do not overlap. This hampers not only our understanding of reconciliation, but its promotion in the international system as well. In response to this methodological malaise, the article prescribes friendly amendments—conceptual modifications and refinements designed to increase measurement validation of reconciliation as a conceptual variable.

This article takes the Nyabarongo river as a lens through which to tentatively reflect on the transformation of lieux de memoire in post‐genocide Rwanda in the period 1992–2009. It is culled from a larger, multi‐year project on the construction, deconstruction, and reconstruction of collective memory in Rwanda that revolves around a systematic, historical, and spatial analysis of the hundreds of genocide memorials, informal and otherwise, that have been created — and some that have disappeared — in the last fifteen years.

This text, first published in 1941, provides a comprehensive analysis of the rise and nature of National-Socialism, and is the only such analysis written from within Hitler’s Germany. Its central thesis is that two states co-existed in National-Socialist Germany—hence, Fraenkel’s invention of the concept of the dual state. This was comprised of a normative state (which protected the legal order as expressed in legislation, decisions of the courts, and decisions of administrative bodies) and a prerogative state (governed by the ruling party, and unrestrained by legal guarantees). The relationship and conflict between these states is analyzed through decisions of the German courts and the development of judicial practice. The book is divided into three parts. The first part describes the existing legal order. The second part attempts to show that the parallel structures within Germany radically affected German politics and society. The third part delves into the relationship between the dual Nazi state and German capitalism. It asks whether the rise of the dual state was a consequence of a crisis in capitalism. While this book is primarily a first-hand account and analysis of the dual state’s operation in National-Socialist Germany, it retains its vital relevance for the theory of democracy in the twenty-first century. This republication of the 1941 English edition includes both Fraenkel’s 1974 introduction to the German second edition, never before published in English, and a new introduction by Professor Jens Meierhenrich of the London School of Economics and Political Science that places the book in theoretical and historical context and assesses its lasting legacy.