The ICTY and Forced Elite Change in Prijedor, Bosnia and Herzegovina

Abstract

Abstract Despite the fact that transitional justice measures have become established components of most modern peacebuilding efforts, existing understandings of complex causal pathways that link transitional justice interventions to their supposed goal of reconciliation in deeply divided societies continue to remain largely underspecified and under-theorized. This article empirically investigates the impact of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia on reconciliation in Prijedor, Bosnia and Herzegovina. After a detailed process-tracing study of reconciliation in the town, it proposes that the ICTY has contributed to socio-political and institutional reconciliation via the mechanism of forced elite change.