Settling Accounts: Violence, Justice, and Accountability in Postsocialist Europe

by John W. Borneman

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780691016818
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	11/23/1997
Series:	Princeton Studies in Culture/Power/History
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	216
Product dimensions:	7.75(w) x 10.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

John Borneman is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Cornell University. He is the author of After the Wall: East Meets West in the New Berlin, Belonging in the Two Berlins: Kin, State, Nation, and Subversions of International Order: Studies in the Political Anthropology of Culture.

Table of Contents

Preface
Acknowledgments
Pt. 1	Framing, Comparing, Historicizing	1
Ch. 1	Framing the Rule of Law in East-Central Europe	3
Ch. 2	Comparing: Decommunization - Recommunization - Reform?	26
Ch. 3	Historicizing the Rule of Law	40
Pt. 2	Ethnography of Criminality	57
Ch. 4	The Invocation of the Rechtsstaat in East Germany: Governmental and Unification Criminality	59
Ch. 5	Accountability on Trial	80
Pt. 3	Ethnography of Vindication	97
Ch. 6	Democratic Accountability: Results, Evaluations, Ramifications	99
Ch. 7	Justice and Dignity: Victims, Vindication, and Accountability	111
Pt. 4	Legitimacy	137
Ch. 8	The Rule of Law and the State: Violence, Justice, and Legitimacy	139
Notes	167
Bibliography	177
Index	187
Name Index	195

Editorial Reviews

"As Borneman notes, from Argentina to South Korea, people are struggling with the proper response to past abuse. . . . [Readers} will be rewarded with a subtle, albeit hardly indisputable, notion of 'retributive justice' and its value."

Foreign Affairs

"As Borneman notes, from Argentina to South Korea, people are struggling with the proper response to past abuse. . . . [Readers} will be rewarded with a subtle, albeit hardly indisputable, notion of 'retributive justice' and its value."-- "Foreign Affairs"

From the Publisher