Mobilizing Truth: Agenda Setting in a Transnational Social Movement

Abstract

This article provides a neoinstitutionalist account of how a transnational social movement (TSM) sets its agenda. A theoretical framework is presented to reveal how logics from the transnational and local organizational fields influence legal mobilization. To provide insight into how a TSM accommodates contradictory and competing logics within and between these fields, this article examines mobilization around a fact‐finding commission, sometimes called a truth commission, to address the ongoing social and political divides in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). The findings, based on fieldwork conducted between 2009 and 2011, are used to develop the theoretical concept of a quasi‐judicial medium, a legal body that, initially, will appeal to a variety of actors, but may be unable to adequately address existing divides. The conclusions point to further directions in the study of transnational legal mobilization, particularly the conditions under which the ambiguity of a movement strategy helps meet and/or moderate movement goals.

Truth, justice, and reconciliation on the ground: normative divergence in the Western Balkans

“…International transitional justice activists have actively pursued alternative justice mechanisms in the Western Balkans. The premier international transitional justice NGO, the International Centre for Transitional Justice, for example, actively supported the establishment of the (ultimately failed) Serbian Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 2001 (Grodsky 2009), and has been consulting on the ongoing Regional Commission RECOM (Rowen 2012). Another international actor, the United States Institute for Peace, also tried to help set up the Bosnian truth commission as early as 1997 (Freeman 2004).…”

“…Further, justice on the ground was often equated with the law, and most people could not grasp the concept of the ICTY verdicts being rendered in accordance with the law, while still not delivering a just result (Rowen 2012). This issue came up repeatedly when defendants would get reduced sentences in exchange for a confession, or a plea bargaining agreement, which most victims considered fundamentally unjust and morally unacceptable.…”

“…In the political environment that lacks any meaningful sense of security community and common identity (Grillot and Cruise 2013), it is hard to see how this divergent meaning of reconciliation transforms into a more inclusive normative framework. Because of this very local meaning of reconciliation, projects that had reconciliation, or even just truth seeking, as their goal (such as, for example, RECOM) were immediately delegitimised because they were locally understood as amnesties for crimes, as impunity instead of retributive justice (Hodžić 2010;Rowen 2012). The local meaning of reconciliation thus departed so dramatically from its international normative intention that it shaped the environment in which local transitional justice projects operated and made their social reach much more difficult.…”

“We Don't Believe in Transitional Justice:” Peace and the Politics of Legal Ideas in Colombia

“…While truth commissions and voice are often coupled (Rowen 2012), this relationship has a distinct character in Colombia due to the idea of memoria histórica , or historical memory. This idea plays an important role in how individuals understand the goal of truth and, thus, what a transition in Colombia would entail.…”

Jihad in a World of Sovereigns: Law, Violence, and Islam in the Bosnia Crisis

“…The jihad trials have been largely overlooked by scholars of transitional justice, who have instead understandably focused on the major atrocity cases involving Serb nationalist defendants, such as the Srebrenica massacre, the siege of Sarajevo, and the Omarska concentration camp. This is unsurprising, for the transitional justice literature typically posits external actors (Internationals) such as the ICTY, human rights NGOs, and diplomats acting upon local ones; scholars tend to focus on institutional dynamics or local “reception” to international norms, debating the extent to which the transitional justice project has been successful or not, harmful or not, desirable or not (Hagan 2003; Hagan, Levi, and Ferrales 2006; Meyerstein 2007; Nettelfield 2010; Rowen 2012). The jihad cases instead highlight actors who are depicted as neither local nor international, but rather as foreign in a manner distinct from Western actors such as peacekeepers and NGOs.…”