Description
Recent scholarship has identified a global presence of agonistic transitional justice, which represents an alternative to traditional liberal approaches to the field (Murphy and Walsh, forthcoming). While agonism is supported by a well-developed body of literature and this macro-level analysis, an understanding of how agonism is realised in practice, particularly from a comparative standpoint, remains underdeveloped. This study aims to bridge the gap between theory and empirics by examining agonistic transitional justice in Northern Ireland and Colombia. Based on archival analysis and interviews with both governmental and non-governmental officials in Northern Ireland as well as archival analysis of the Colombian case, the study finds that elements of agonistic transitional justice are present at the institutional level in both cases. By examining examples such as the Parades Commission, the creation of shared spaces, and the potential advent of new transitional justice mechanisms, the study explores how agonistic transitional justice can emerge alongside traditional approaches and what different contextual examples of agonistic transitional justice look like in practice. The study also reflects on the implications of the differences between agonistic transitional justice in Northern Ireland and Colombia.
