Books by Christopher Lamont
Non-Western Encounters with Democratization offers diverse perspectives on democracy and transiti... more Non-Western Encounters with Democratization offers diverse perspectives on democracy and transition spanning the Middle East and North Africa to East Asia. This unique collection of essays, drawn from contextually rich case studies presents readers with a variety of non-western encounters with democracy and provides important insights into the dramatic political and social transformations in these regions over the past decades. The book offers a deeper understanding of democratization and challenges the image of western democracy as a universal model to which non-western societies aspire.
Taking the events of the Arab Spring as the starting point, international contributors look at why the uprisings that rapidly spread across North Africa and the Middle East had a strong resonance in East Asia but failed to inspire similar revolts. Through direct engagement with non-western experiences of political transition the book demonstrates a unique coherence across two regions relatively under explored in democratization literature.
This book guides you through the entirety of the research process in International Relations, fro... more This book guides you through the entirety of the research process in International Relations, from selecting a research question and reviewing the literature to field research and writing up. Covering both qualitative and quantitative methods in IR, it offers a balanced assessment of the key methodological debates and research methods within the discipline. Research Methods in International Relations is essential reading for both undergraduate and postgraduate students taking Research Methods courses in International Relations, Politics, Security and Strategic Studies.
International Criminal Justice and the Politics of Compliance provides a comprehensive study of c... more International Criminal Justice and the Politics of Compliance provides a comprehensive study of compliance with legal obligations derived from the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia's (ICTY) Statute and integrates theoretical debates on compliance into international justice scholarship. Through the use of three models of compliance based on coercion, self-interest and norms, Christopher Lamont explores both the domestic politics of war crimes indictments and efforts by external actors such as the European Union, the United States and the Tribunal itself to induce compliance outcomes. He examines whether compliance outcomes do or do not translate into a changed normative understanding of international criminal justice on the part of target states.
Articles by Christopher Lamont
Political Anthropological Research on International Social Sciences (PARISS), 2021
This article offers a critical perspective on emerging and alternative spaces for emancipation wi... more This article offers a critical perspective on emerging and alternative spaces for emancipation within transitional justice studies. Taking into account recent critical literature and postcolonial interventions in transitional justice studies, we argue that barriers to moving our understanding of transitional justice forward are both conceptual and methodological. Conceptual hurdles are visible through narrow justice demands often limited to the context of post-conflict and post-authoritarian settings, thus normalizing injustice in liberal democratic and postcolonial contexts. Methodological impediments exist because transitional justice scholarship operates at a positivist level, or trying to explain certain, and desired, outcomes rather than destabilizing and unsettling unequal power relations. As a result, research practice in the field reflects the perspectives and preferences of elites in transition societies through a legal-technical mechanistic imagining of transitional justice that we refer to as the transitional justice machine. We argue that the needs and voices of marginalized social actors, particularly within states that are largely defined as liberal democratic or postcolonial, have long been ignored due to these practices. Against the backdrop of evolving agency patterns, including widespread global protest and demands to deal with the past across countries, we zoom in on a variety of actors who, until now, have not been at the focus of transitional justice studies. Drawing on a variety of case studies, this article contributes to the critical understanding of transitional justice studies as a Bourdieusian field. First, by expanding the conceptual lens to include racial, socio-economic, and postcolonial injustice, and, second, by advancing a more critical methodological approach that puts at its center unequal power relationships.
This article critically examines the concept of legal empowerment as it has been used with refere... more This article critically examines the concept of legal empowerment as it has been used with reference to transitional justice, mapping its rise and impact based on a selection of case studies. In recent decades, international transitional justice advocacy has evolved dramatically, with practice increasingly emphasising the centrality of criminal accountability for violence, precisely as more holistic approaches have emerged that have broadened the remit of transitional justice. Post-conflict justice advocates have thus become professionalised transitional justice entrepreneurs working on issues such as democratic transitions, rule of law and human rights. A legal empowerment discourse has emerged in a number of scholarly debates that discuss legalistic and normative issues related to the implementation of retributive and restorative justice mechanisms. In theory, the concept of legal empowerment addresses the issue of social exclusion in transitions, increasing the rights of the marginalised. In practice, however, legal empowerment has disappointed and raises several issues around its performance that are scrutinised in this article. Drawing on case studies in Nepal, Tunisia and Bosnia-Herzegovina the authors analyse issues related to agency, institutions and structure, and argue for a needs-centred, participatory approach in place of the rights-based legal empowerment concept.
Politicka Misao: Croatian Political Science Review
On 14 January 2011 the overthrow of President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali left Tunisia confronted wit... more On 14 January 2011 the overthrow of President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali left Tunisia confronted with the task of addressing the dual legacy of Ben Ali’s violent crackdown on protesters in the weeks preceding his ouster and decades of widespread human rights abuses. In the immediate aftermath of 14 January, interim governments launched a number of improvised efforts to deal with the past. These efforts included investigative commissions, compensation, vetting of former regime officials, and criminal trials. However, after the election of a National Constituent Assembly in October 2011, there was a concerted effort to draft a comprehensive law on transitional justice. Tunisia’s Ministry of Human Rights and Transitional Justice launched a national consultation to define and shape transitional justice mechanisms for post-Ben Ali Tunisia. This article argues that although Tunisia’s national consultation on transitional justice can be heralded as a novel consultative initiative to transmit transitional justice demands into transitional justice legislation, it has also served to highlight contested visions of the post-Ben Ali state and contested memories of Tunisia’s secularist and Islamist political traditions.
International Journal of Transitional Justice, 2013
Explanations of transitional justice that focus on the balance of power between incoming and outg... more Explanations of transitional justice that focus on the balance of power between incoming and outgoing elites, as popularized by Samuel Huntington, 5 or through norm internalization, as popularized by Thomas Risse, Stephen Ropp and Kathryn Sikkink, 6 are not new to political science. Before embarking on his case studies, Grodsky surveys the political science literature for explanations of transitional justice and highlights the intuitive attraction of power-based approaches. He demonstrates that such realist approaches to ...
International Studies Review, Jan 1, 2011
On December 10, 2010, Ivo Sanader, Croatia's former prime minister (2003–2009), was arre... more On December 10, 2010, Ivo Sanader, Croatia's former prime minister (2003–2009), was arrested by Austrian police on a Croatian arrest warrant while attempting to flee to the United States (Jutarnji List 2010). Sanader's arrest on charges of financial corruption coincided with a new impetus to prosecute formerly untouchable Croatian elites from Sanader's ruling party and constitutes part of a growing global trend to confront crimes perpetrated by former ruling elites that range from financial embezzlement to crimes against humanity and genocide ...
Europe-Asia Studies, Jan 1, 2010
O n 10 J anuary 2010 I vo J osipović, a Z agreb U niversity law professor, was elected Croatia&am... more O n 10 J anuary 2010 I vo J osipović, a Z agreb U niversity law professor, was elected Croatia's third post-communist president. Despite Croatia's presidency being a largely symbolic office, Josipović's election marked a transformative moment for the post-conflict and post-authoritarian state. Indeed, as Croatia moves closer to the conclusion of its European Union accession negotiations, the 2010s may very well be remembered as the decade in which Croatia moved beyond the post-war transition paradigm. In general, the ...
Europe-Asia Studies, Jan 1, 2010
T he electoral triumph of the C roatian Democratic Union (Hrvatska demokratska zajednica, HDZ) in... more T he electoral triumph of the C roatian Democratic Union (Hrvatska demokratska zajednica, HDZ) in Croatia's November 2003 parliamentary elections marked a return to government for the party of late President Franjo Tuđman. Ever since Croatia's first post-communist elections in 1990, the HDZ has been the largest parliamentary political party and only found itself in opposition from 2000 to 2003. In the Tuđman-era the HDZ had insisted that the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) lacked jurisdiction over ...
Politics, Jan 1, 2010
Mississippi’s contemporary revisiting of racial violence that marred the state’s transition from ... more Mississippi’s contemporary revisiting of racial violence that marred the state’s transition from a white supremacist political order, colloquially known as Jim Crow, to a post-Jim Crow polity constitutes a valuable case study for transitional justice scholarship and practice. It is within the context of an often overlooked yet violently contested transition that transitional justice discourses have increasingly permeated debates on how, and even whether or not, to confront Mississippi’s violent past. Mississippi’s recent attempts to confront past abuses through criminal prosecutions and non-state community-based initiatives provides an important insight into the limits of criminal prosecutions and a growing turn towards the establishment of a truth commission to confront past human rights abuses perpetrated within the state.
Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies, Jan 1, 2009
When the United Nations Security Council authorized the creation of the International Criminal Tr... more When the United Nations Security Council authorized the creation of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in May 1993, there was widespread scepticism that the world's first international criminal court since the post-Second World War tribunals at Nuremberg and Tokyo could establish itself as a formidable regional actor. To be sure, early scholarship on the ICTY was tinged with pessimism and within wider International Relations (IR) literature the excitement amongst legal practitioners and ...
Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics, Jan 1, 2009
At the conclusion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's 1999 air campaign agai... more At the conclusion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's 1999 air campaign against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Savezna republika Jugoslavije: SRJ) the United States publicly committed itself to a policy of regime change towards the Belgrade government presided over by Yugoslav president Slobodan Milošević. In addition, the May 1999 indictment of Milošević by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia for crimes against humanity marked an unprecedented act of judicial intervention that ...
Balkanistica, Jan 1, 2008
Balkanistica, Jan 1, 2004
Abstract: This article examines the legacy of authoritarianism and violent conflict on Croatia&am... more Abstract: This article examines the legacy of authoritarianism and violent conflict on Croatia's party system with a particular focus on parties of the centre and far right. Through an exploration of the Croatian Democratic Union, the Croatian Party of Rights and the Croatian Bloc, it is ...
Book Chapters by Christopher Lamont
Handbook on the Politics and Governance of Big Data and Artificial Intelligence, 2023
Artificial intelligence (AI) has transformed public policy and governance with machine learning (... more Artificial intelligence (AI) has transformed public policy and governance with machine learning (ML) facilitating decision-making in security, criminal justice, and surveillance. AI has also become increasingly opaque and autonomous, as recent technological advancements have led to the development of AI-powered systems that require almost no human input. However, despite these developments, transitional justice practice and scholarship has not yet engaged in a sustained manner on the question of what these developments mean for the field. This contribution will highlight how transitional justice, with its focus on dealing with the legacy of large-scale and systemic atrocity, is faced with dilemmas presented by new digital justice spaces, and it will also explore how these dilemmas will grow as digital spaces continue to expand. First, digital governance and digital authoritarianism draw upon big data analysis for both governance and repression. As a result, truth commissions established to confront the legacy of digital authoritarianism will be confronted with the challenge of opening the black box of digital surveillance technologies. Second, AI governance raises a number of new dilemmas relating to individual criminal liability and state responsibility. To be sure, the 'algorithmic opacity' of new generations of AI systems that produce AI outputs that are untethered to inputs and raise questions of how to understand human and machine agency. By drawing upon a spatial framework, this chapter will explore AI in the context of an emergent digital space within transitional justice and attempt to unpack some of the consequences of the growing role of AI across fields of decision-making for transitional justice practice and research.
The Milosevic Trial: An Autopsy, 2013
Evaluative studies of international trials have generated widely divergent conclusions as to the ... more Evaluative studies of international trials have generated widely divergent conclusions as to the impact of trial processes on post-conflict societies. While these divergent conclusions reflect significant disagreements over how to measure impact, some measures are possible. Swimelar's chapter illustrates the Milošević trial's disparate effects upon a wide range of constituencies in Bosniadisappointment, reinforcement of narratives about the war, and a perception that more remains to be done to promote transitional justice. A similar finding is evident in Croatia, where the trial was deployed, and coopted, by national elites to reinforce narratives about the justice of Croatia's Homeland War. The Milošević trial was initially welcomed as an opportunity to gain international affirmation of dominant domestic narratives of the 1991-1995 war. However, despite the revelation of important evidence, which pointed to Belgrade's wartime leadership of Croatian Serb rebels in the Republika Srpska Krajina, in Croatia the Milošević trial ultimately left a widespread sense of disappointment with both the trial process and other trials concerning crimes committed during the 1991-1995 war.
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Books by Christopher Lamont
Taking the events of the Arab Spring as the starting point, international contributors look at why the uprisings that rapidly spread across North Africa and the Middle East had a strong resonance in East Asia but failed to inspire similar revolts. Through direct engagement with non-western experiences of political transition the book demonstrates a unique coherence across two regions relatively under explored in democratization literature.
Articles by Christopher Lamont
Book Chapters by Christopher Lamont
Taking the events of the Arab Spring as the starting point, international contributors look at why the uprisings that rapidly spread across North Africa and the Middle East had a strong resonance in East Asia but failed to inspire similar revolts. Through direct engagement with non-western experiences of political transition the book demonstrates a unique coherence across two regions relatively under explored in democratization literature.
The book presents a nuanced, comparative look at Asian countries’ responses to global developments, and China’s rise in particular, and offers a new perspective on the very concept of Asia itself. It will be of interest to scholars, students, and practitioners working in the fields of International Relations, Asian Studies, and Middle Eastern Studies.
ENDORSEMENTS
With its impressively expansive and detailed sweep, this volume makes an extremely valuable contribution to our understanding of the rapidly changing dynamics between East and West Asia. Situating them in the wider strategic context of great power rivalry, the volume looks at key actors’ approaches not through the usual bilateral or functional prisms but through a genuinely cross-regional approach – making for an innovative reframing of even familiar issues. Including most of the best scholars in the field, this is a book that will be of great use to academics and policy practitioners alike.”
— Andrew Small, Senior Transatlantic Fellow, Indo-Pacific Program, the German Marshall Fund of the United States, and the author of The China-Pakistan Axis (Hurst/Oxford University Press, 2015)
“This volume provides a rich and multifaceted examination of the complex interregional relationship between East and West Asia in the twenty-first century. With contributions from leading scholars and experts, it offers a thorough and insightful examination of the strategic, economic, and political aspects of bilateral and multilateral relations between the two regions. It also contributes to a more nuanced understanding of the challenges and opportunities for China-West Asia cooperation during a period of intense great power competition in the region. Overall, this volume adds significantly to the literature and is a must-read for anyone interested in the shifting contours of today’s global landscape.”
— Sujata Ashwarya, Professor of Western Asian Studies at Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi, India, and the author of India-Iran Relations (Routledge, 2017) and co-editor of Contemporary West Asia (Routledge, 2017)
“This is a very fruitful and thought-provoking book. After the rise of Western powers in the 19th century, East Asia and West Asia drifted apart and formed their respective sub-regions. In the process of globalization and, in particular, Asia’s rise, East-West Asian countries have rediscovered their historical affinities and have built closer political, economic, energy, and cultural ties. At present, their relations are shifting from “back-to-back” to “face-to-face.” Based on multilingual sources, inter-disciplinary methodologies, and rigorous research, this book sheds light on domains, features, and trends of East-West Asia complex relations bilaterally and inter-regionally.”
— Degang Sun, Professor and Director of Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Fudan University, Shanghai, China
“East-West Asia Complex Relations in the Twenty-First Century offers a comprehensive assessment of the complex interregional, multifunctional interactions between the Middle East and East Asia. Written by a diverse collection of leading scholars with deep expertise in these economic, political, and strategic relations, this book contributes significantly to the scholarly literature by broadening understanding of the two-way interactions between various countries in these sub-regions. This empirically rich, up-to-date analysis will be welcomed by scholars and students alike for its novel approach to examining relations between these critical sub-regions in an increasingly interconnected world.”
— Dawn C. Murphy, Associate Professor of National Security Strategy, US National War College, and the author of China’s Rise in the Global South (Stanford University Press, 2022)