Transitional Justice, Rigour and Politics: A Reply to McGrattan
| Date | 01 June 2010 |
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1467-9256.2010.01375.x |
| Published date | 01 June 2010 |
| Author | Kris Brown |
| Subject Matter | Controversy |
P O L I T I C S : 2 0 1 0 V O L 3 0 ( 2 ) , 1 1 9 – 1 2 4
Controversy
Transitional Justice, Rigour and Politics:
A Reply to McGrattanponl_1375119..124
Kris Brown
University of Ulster
This article responds to McGrattan’s critique of transitional justice both as a model of dealing with
the past and as a field of scholarly inquiry. In contrast to his account, this article asserts that there
is an embedded and rigorous approach to uncovering and examining the political within the study
of transitional justice mechanisms, and that McGrattan’s critique is based on an incomplete and
flawed understanding of the literature. The article does however, call for an expansion of political
research into transitional justice in meaningful and critical ways.
Introduction
Cillian McGrattan’s critique of transitional justice (TJ) appears very cutting. TJ is
presented as weak on political analysis and naïve – and his argument gives the
impression that TJ has been hastily fashioned as an unwieldy, roughly sewn
together bricolage of both scholarly scrutiny and policy. His critique is twofold –
transitional justice ‘eschews basic political analysis’ while itself ‘contributing to an
intensely political framing of the issues involved’ (McGrattan, 2009, p. 164) – in
short it is a field that is both naïve and structurally biased. In McGrattan’s critique
this adds up to a toxic brew – its political and historical ineptitude neutralises the
past, forces reconciliation with terrorists, robs victims of respect and invigorates the
self-serving narratives of the perpetrators (McGrattan, 2009, p. 170). How much
purchase does this analysis really have?
TJ: a sightless cuckoo in the nest?
McGrattan’s conception of TJ theorists is one in which the theorists intrude rather
bluntly into wide areas of policy and inquiry, and substitute their own analysis for
more rigorous and deft political examination. TJ is thus, in his own words, part of
an ‘all-encompassing vocation’ that assumes responsibility for topics and questions
in a manner designed to ‘write politics out of the equation’. As such McGrattan
argues that TJ is culturally blinded to its own internal politics and framing
bias, particularly in terms of its ‘assumptions, methodology and conclusions’
(McGrattan, 2009, p. 166).
This is simply not borne out in an examination of the TJ literature, including many
of the authors that McGrattan cites. Instead, TJ theorists advocate ‘both drawing on
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K R I S B R O W N
other disciplines, and firmly supporting parallel disciplinary fields to work alongside
a legal research agenda ... and utilising empirical and socio-legal methodology to
advance legal inquiry’ (Bell, Campbell and Ní Aoláin, 2007, p. 81). Rather than
indulging in a heavily legal approach to dealing with the past in Northern Ireland
(McGrattan’s focus of study), theorists have argued for employing ‘social science
fact finding methodologies’ – TJ is often advocating the extension of the social
sciences, including political science, into the study of dealing with the past (Camp-
bell and Turner, 2008, p. 374). Indeed, TJ scholars must, and do, engage with the
political at the earliest levels of analysis. How else to explain the growing political,
social and cultural emphasis on ‘the past’? For example, Patricia Lundy and Mark
McGovern discern a complex web composed of strands such as identity politics, the
‘memory boom’ fuelled by the great mass killings of the twentieth century, the
growth of therapeutic paradigms, the attempt to elevate and enshrine standards of
human rights and the emergence of Kaldor’s ‘new wars’ which warrant new ways
of making peace (Lundy and McGovern, 2008). Neither is TJ oblivious to internal
politics and structural biases within its frames; indeed a vigorous debate is taking
place between those advocating (and studying) processes of dealing with the past
‘from below’ and more traditional paradigms of TJ. The debate around the study of
TJ processes has been characterised in expressly political terms, and with a degree
of reflexivity – as one researcher observes, the TJ field is in part ‘a cloak’ for a
variety of scholarly approaches, some of which carry their own baggage, predispo-
sitions and ‘colonising’ agenda. Political and interdisciplinary contests are thus
placed at the heart of the TJ emergent field or ‘cloak’ (Bell, 2009). TJ is less a
usurper of the political, and more a jostling forum.
Blind to the past or rigorous in observation?
For McGrattan the whole TJ approach is ‘ill-equipped to deal with the politics of the
past’ (McGrattan, 2009, p. 167). His exemplar of the TJ method is the work of Colm
Campbell and Ita Connolly (2003 and 2006) who he feels simply reproduce ‘ter-
rorists’ stories and blandly recycle narratives of state repression/mobilisation’ with
little heed paid to alternative sources given their avoidance of ‘the basic historical
practice of source criticism’ (McGrattan, 2009, p. 167). A self-application of source
criticism might have given McGrattan pause for thought. Contrary to his assertion,
Campbell and Connolly employ a high degree of source triangulation and mixing of
method, which is apparent from their bibliography and footnotes, even without
consideration of the main body of text. They do make use of interviews with
convicted former paramilitaries, but their work has also typically included docu-
mentary analysis of government archives in Great Britain, Ireland and Northern
Ireland, court documentation, the longitudinal and quantitative analysis of arrests,
trials and other security measures, as well as examination of a whole host of
secondary sources authored by diverse individuals such as academics, political
activists and security force members (Campbell and Connolly, 2003 and 2006). This
is a rigorous method. Neither do they uncritically absorb paramilitary narratives,
instead preferring critically to assess stated motivations and chart shifts in validating
frames, while highlighting the fact that few paramilitaries demonstrated awareness
of how their violence was mobilising rival communities (Campbell and Connolly,
2006). The fact that McGrattan settles on these two as exemplars of scholastic
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weakness and the supine acceptance of perpetrator narratives does little to convince
the reader of his rigour in getting to grips with the TJ literature.
McGrattan also feels that actual TJ practices such as truth commissions or the
preservation and dissemination of testimony are likely to evolve into the propa-
gandistic self-justification of ‘terrorist’ narratives, and that TJ theorists are blind to
this. This is a curious assertion as it appears automatically to rob victims of agency,
and wider society of any form of critical discernment. It is also inherently anti-
political – surely tussles over memory...
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