International Criminal Justice and the Politics of Transition in Croatia

An international legal obligation to confront mass atrocity through criminal prosecutions is now unquestioned. Indeed, it was the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) which helped establish a post-cold war prosecutorial consensus that led to the emergence of the contemporary international criminal tribunal system. However, despite the spectacular growth of the tribunal system, social science investigations of the resonance of international trial processes within post-conflict states raise deeply troubling questions for policymakers and scholars regarding the relationship between international justice and post-conflict states in transition. In order to critically reflect upon the impact of international criminal trial processes within post-conflict states, I examined the impact ICTY prosecutions have had upon the transformation of the Croatia’s largest political party, the Croatian Democratic Union.