Deliberative coping with the past: Is it possible and how to determine it?

We hereby invite you to the lecture of Professor Kostovicova and Professor Sokolić on the topic of deliberative coping with the past.

The theory of democratic deliberation has its roots in attempts to formulate the functioning of democracy from the perspective of communication in the context of developed democratic states. However, we have recently witnessed a new direction in the development of this theory in the context of societies that have been divided by war and other forms of political violence along ethnic or other identity lines. This development of the theory of democratic deliberation can be explained by the belief that the normative backbones of democratic deliberation, such as rational argumentation, respect for interlocutors and their views, and seeing problems from the other’s point of view, can have a positive impact in those environments. It is argued that deliberative communication focused on solving problems in divided societies cannot only lead to more legitimate solutions to political problems (as, after all, in developed democracies), but also that the process of deliberation can positively affect relations between divided parties, such as reducing prejudice against members of other ethnic groups. This is also the reason why the theory of democratic deliberation has become attractive to peacebuilding theorists. Although they articulated the concept of deliberative justice as a form of dealing with the legacy of war and gross violations of human rights, so far we have not seen any evidence that deliberative dealing with the past is possible. The lecture reflects on theoretical, empirical and methodological shortcomings in attempts to apply the theory of democratic deliberation in societies that have experienced war, and presents the results of empirical research and measurement of discourse deliberativeness in original corpora containing transcripts of conversations on the topic of transitional justice between members of opposing parties on the territory of the former Yugoslavia. The lecture is part of the research carried out within the research program entitled, “Transitional Justice Interactions and Peacebuilding: From Static to Dynamic Discourses between National, Ethnic, Gender and Age Groups,” supported by the European Research Council.

This event was organized by the Laboratory for Active Citizenship of the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory.

Denisa Kostovicova, PhD, is an associate professor in the field of global politics at the Institute for European Studies of the London School of Economics and Political Science. She is the author of Reconciliation by Stealth: How People Talk About War Crimes, forthcoming from Cornell University Press, and Kosovo: The Politics of Identity and Space, published by Routledge in 2005. With colleagues, she edited eight books, including Rethinking Reconciliation and Transitional Justice after Conflict published by Routledge, 2018, and Civil Society and Transitions in the Western Balkans published by Palgrave MacMillan in 2013. Dr. Kostovicova received her doctorate from the University of Cambridge, before joining the London School of Economics and Political Science, she worked as a researcher at Linacre College, University of Oxford. Dr. Kostovicova is currently leading a research program entitled, “Transitional Justice Interactions and Peacebuilding: From Static to Dynamic Discourses Between National, Ethnic, Gender and Age Groups,” which is supported by the European Research Council.

Ivor Sokolić, PhD, is a lecturer in politics and international relations at the University of Hertfordshire and a visiting researcher at the Institute of European Studies at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He participates in the project “Transitional Justice Interactions and Peacebuilding: From Static to Dynamic Discourses between National, Ethnic, Gender and Age Groups,” which is supported by the European Research Council. The project investigates the processes of transitional justice in the former Yugoslavia. He received his doctorate from the UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies, and his master’s and bachelor’s degrees in European politics from the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. Dr. Sokolić is the author of the book International Courts and Mass Atrocity: Narratives of War and Justice in Croatia (International Courts and Mass Atrocity: Narratives of War and Justice in Croatia), published by Palgrave MacMillan in 2019, and is the author of numerous articles related to the transition justice in the countries of the former Yugoslavia in the journals Cooperation & Conflict, Nations & Nationalism, Nationalities Papers, Südosteuropa and Politička Misao.