Abstract

This article has two goals. First, to make explicit the theories of change currently operative within transitional justice and, second, to critically engage with both these theories, and dominant theories in international development. As such, it seeks to replace a focus on results, attribution, and linearity with a privileging of process, contribution and complexity. Developing theories of change for transitional justice is challenging, as it is characterised by diverse interventions, complex and contested contexts, and the need to balance principles and pragmatism. Normative, linear and mechanism-based claims remain dominant, while the evidence base for transitional justice is still weak. This article looks at insights from adjacent fields, some of the challenges facing the development of theories of change within transitional justice, and evidence from impact studies and evaluations. In a final section we propose an alternative, drawing on complexity theory and actor-oriented approaches, which suggest an important set of terms – systems, interaction, contingency, context, encounter, emergence, incrementalism – to inform what we term evaluation as understanding.

中文翻译：

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过渡时期正义与变革理论：以评价为理解

摘要

本文有两个目标。首先，明确目前在过渡时期司法中有效的变革理论，其次，与这些理论和国际发展中的主导理论进行批判性接触。因此，它试图以过程，贡献和复杂性的特权来代替对结果，归因和线性的关注。为过渡时期司法发展变革理论是一项挑战，因为它的特点是干预措施多样，情境复杂且存在争议，以及需要在原则和实用主义之间取得平衡。规范，线性和基于机制的主张仍然占主导地位，而过渡司法的证据基础仍然薄弱。本文着眼于来自相邻领域的见解，以及过渡司法中变革理论的发展所面临的一些挑战，以及来自影响研究和评估的证据。在最后一节中，我们提出了一个替代方案，它借鉴了复杂性理论和面向参与者的方法，其中提出了一组重要的术语-系统，交互，偶然性，上下文，相遇，出现，增量主义-来告知我们所谓的评估理解。