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This article analyses the role and the limits of transitology in framing transitional justice studies after the collapse of dictatorial regimes in Southern Europe, Latin America and Eastern Europe. It examines the evolution of the scholarship with reference to three main topics that have been pioneered by transitologists and developed further by transitional justice scholars, namely: the connections between justice for past abuses and democratisation; the determinants of transitional justice; and the relationship between accountability and the passage of time. The article argues that while transitology has nurtured important research initiatives in the field of transitional justice, its approaches suffer from serious shortcomings. They remained overly prescriptive and short-term in focus, and they often dehistoricised social phenomena. Adopting a teleological perspective on transitions supposedly bound for democracy, they overlooked comparisons and interconnections between transitional justice processes originating in democratic contexts and those arising from dictatorial settings. Moreover, in their attempt to build general typologies and establish causalities between types of dictatorial regimes, exit modes from authoritarianism and justice mechanisms, transitological approaches often failed to explain the peculiarities of national cases, and likewise paid scant attention to international contexts and transnational interactions.

By the end of 1970s, transitology, or the study of the transformations following the breakdown of dictatorial regimes, became a sub-discipline of political science. Various theoretical perspectives oriented the analysis toward different factors that could decisively influence political change and transition: the economic and cultural prerequisites, the weight of the recent past, the extrication-path from dictatorship or the international setting. This article examines critically the main currents of transitology in order to re-evaluate their heuristic capacity, their interpretative limits and their methodological difficulties. It stands for rethinking the paradigms of political transition, towards a multidimensional model of analysis of political change, more sensitive to the local specificities and to the dynamic of transformations on the long term.

In einem Vergleich mit anderen postsozialistischen Ländern in Mittelosteuropa und Russland untersucht die Verfasserin die Brüche, aber auch die Kontinuität der ehemaligen Nomenklatura in den demokratischen Strukturen des rumänischen Staates (Parlament, Regierungen, Präsidentenamt). Während die Nomenklatura in der Revolution vom Dezember 1989 zunächst ihre Kontinuität bewahrte, kam es in der Transformationszeit der Jahre 1990 bis 2000 doch zu einem Elitenwandel. Obwohl ein Teil der früheren rumänischen Nomenklatura Positionen der politischen Macht nach 1989 beibehalten und zu einem der strukturierenden Akteure der Transformationszeit werden konnte, führte der Sturz des Kommunismus zu grundsätzlichen Veränderungen in den sozialen Hierarchien und im Prozess der Rekrutierung der Eliten. Diese Kontinuität basierte auch auf dem symbolischen Kapital eines Teils der ehemaligen politischen Nomenklatura, deren Angehörige sich in Opposition zu Ceausescus Regime befanden und sich so des Images eines potenziellen Reformträgers erfreuten. (ICE2)

This volume considers the important and timely question of criminal justice as a method of addressing state violence committed by non-democratic regimes. The book's main objectives concern a fresh, contemporary, and critical analysis of transitional criminal justice as a concept and its related measures, beginning with the initiatives that have been put in place with the fall of the Communist regimes in Europe in 1989.The project argues for rethinking and revisiting filters that scholars use to interpret main issues of transitional criminal justice, such as: the relationship between judicial accountability, democratisation and politics in transitional societies; the role of successor trials in rewriting history; the interaction between domestic and international actors and specific initiatives in shaping transitional justice; and the paradox of time in enhancing accountability for human rights violations. In order to accomplish this, the volume considers cases of domestic accountability in the post-1989 era, from different geographical areas, such as Europe, Asia and Africa, in relation to key events from various periods of time. In this way the approach, which investigates space and time-lines in key examples, also takes into account a longitudinal study of transitional criminal justice itself. About the book'Transitional justice nowadays is an industry which produces hundreds of texts each year and it is difficult to turn our attention to an intellectual product. This book is well-balanced and will find recognition in readers and students of transitional justice, as well as researchers on social transformation. It is a collection in the best tradition of socio-legal research. The book is recommended for two reasons: its serious treatment of criminal justice as a part of transitional justice, and its approach, which locates the problem of transitional justice in post-communist Europe in a broader, comparative context.' Prof. Dr. Adam Czarnota, Scientific Director of the International Institute for the Sociology of Law, Oati, Spain'By carefully considering how criminal justice relates to democratization, collective memory, internationalist concerns, and the passage of time since violations occurred, this volume contributes importantly to the evolving transitional justice literature. The questions it raises are timely and theoretically grounded, and the choice of cases diverse and illuminating. Its authors richly contextualize their examinations, complemen ...