Justice without transition? Actor motivations for transitional justice initiation during ongoing conflict, comparing the democratic republic of the Congo and Ukraine

Abstract

Transitional justice (TJ) has traditionally been understood as a post-conflict or post-authoritarian endeavour, deployed once a political settlement creates space for accountability. Yet in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Ukraine, many mechanisms have been initiated while armed conflict remains ongoing. Existing literature has established that such early initiation is possible, but has not explained why particular actors choose to initiate specific measures at specific moments during a conflict, rather than waiting for its resolution. This thesis tries to address that gap through a qualitative, most-different comparative case study of the DRC and Ukraine, drawing on nine semi-structured interviews with practitioners, academics, journalists and international staff, analysed through inductive-deductive thematic coding. It develops an integrated framework combining the Cognitivist Theory of Action, Readiness Theory and a synthesis of structural conditions to explain why actors initiate TJ, why they do so now rather than later, and what determines whether this becomes possible. The findings show that initiation rests on three layers. Actors act for a combination of strategic, normative and mixed motivations, whose specific content varies by pillar and case but whose broad types recur across both. They act now because negativism, i.e. the perception that inaction has become untenable, and optimism, i.e. the belief that change is achievable, jointly cross a readiness threshold. Whether this threshold is reachable at all depends on the surrounding conflict, political and societal conditions. This logic is differentiated across pillars. Justice and reparations are triggered by the same underlying structural mechanisms and motivational combination in both cases, despite differing content, whereas truth-seeking and institutional reforms diverge from this pattern in ways only partially explained by the data. The thesis contributes to the literature on TJ during ongoing conflict by explaining why, when and through which mechanism-specific pathways TJ initiation occurs, with practical implications for how policymakers can target their interventions more efficiently.