Settling Accounts : : Violence, Justice, and Accountability in Postsocialist Europe / / John Borneman.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Princeton University Press eBook-Package Archive 1927-1999
• VerfasserIn: Borneman, John,
• Place / Publishing House: Princeton, NJ : : Princeton University Press, , [1997]; ©1998
• Year of Publication: 1997
• Edition: Course Book
• Language: English
• Series: Princeton Studies in Culture/Power/History
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (216 p.)

As new states in the former East bloc begin to reckon with their criminal pasts in the years following a revolutionary change of regimes, a basic pattern emerges: In those states where some form of retributive justice has been publicly enacted, there has generally been much less of a recourse to collective retributive violence. In Settling Accounts, John Borneman explores the attempts by these aspiring democratic states to invoke the principles of the "rule of law" as a means of achieving retributive justice, that is, convicting wrongdoers and restoring dignity to victims of moral injuries. Democratic regimes, Borneman maintains, require a strict form of accountability that holds leaders responsible for acts of criminality. This accountability is embodied in the principles of the rule of law, and retribution is at the moral center of these principles. Drawing from his ethnographic work in the former East Germany and with select comparisons to other East-Central European states, Borneman critically examines the construction of categories of criminality. He argues against the claims that economic growth, liberal democracy, or acts of reconciliation are adequate means to legitimate the transformed East bloc states. The cycles of violence in states lacking a system of retributive justice help to support this claim. Invocation of the principles of the rule of law must be seen as a chance for a more democratic, more accountable, and less violent world.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- Part One: Framing, Comparing, Historicizing -- Chapter 1. Framing the Rule of Lawin East-Central Europe -- Chapter 2. Comparing: Decommunization-Recommunization-Reform? -- Chapter 3. Historicizing the Rule of Law -- Part Two: Ethnography Of Criminality -- Chapter 4. The Invocation of the Rechtsstaat in East Germany: Governmental and Unification Criminality -- Chapter 5. Accountability on Trial -- Part Three: Ethnography of Vindication -- Chapter 6. Democratic Accountability: Results, Evaluations, Ramifications -- Chapter 7. Justice and Dignity: Victims, Vindication, and Accountability -- Part Four: Legitimacy -- Chapter 8. The Rule of Law and the State: Violence, Justice, and Legitimacy -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index -- Name Index