Journal Articles

• Kochanski, Adam. 2024. “Counterframing Truth? Interactions in Art and Justice in Post-Conflict Cambodia.” Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding (accepted).

Abstract
Authoritarian dynamics often produce a fundamental mismatch between what can be said publicly, and what is hidden and takes place out of plain sight. This raises the question: how do interactions between subordinates and the dominant shape artistic interventions in post-conflict Cambodia? This article explores the dialectical relationship between the public and the ‘hidden’ transcript in intergenerational art dialogues on the Khmer Rouge. It contends that interactions in art and justice create openings to circulate discourses, images, and meanings that differ from the public transcript, thereby, providing a means to defy the powerful and counterframe dominant narratives of the past.

• Kochanski, Adam. 2021. “Framing, truth-telling, and the limits of local transitional justice.” Review of International Studies 47 (4): 468–88.

Abstract
Transitional justice (TJ) is undergoing a legitimacy crisis. While recent critical TJ scholarship has touted the transformative potential of locally rooted mechanisms as a possible means to emancipate TJ, this burgeoning literature rests on shaky assumptions about the purported benefits of local TJ and provides inadequate attention to local-national power dynamics. By taking these factors into consideration, this article contends that local TJ efforts can be used to deflect justice in manners that paradoxically allow ruling parties to avoid human rights accountability and to conceal the truth about wartime violations. It further argues that the principal method by which justice is subverted is not through overt manipulation by abusive governments, but rather, through subtle and indirect ‘distortional framing’ practices, which ruling parties use to set discursive limits around discussions of conflict-related events and to obfuscate their own serious crimes. After developing this argument theoretically, the case study of Cambodia is considered in detail to reveal and to trace the processes by which distortional framing has been used as a technique to deflect justice.

• Kochanski, Adam. 2021. “State (ir)responsibility and the (un)making of transformative reparations at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia.” Peacebuilding 9 (2): 129–44.

Abstract
To what extent are reparations still meaningful when a government is unwilling or unable to deliver or endorse these initiatives? And what are the consequences for transitional justice when private authorities and external actors step in and abdicate the state’s responsibility to deliver these public goods after a war? This article explores opportunities for public-private actor collaborations in this area and argues that the act of state abdication creates a legitimacy gap in reparations programmes that compromises their value as a public good that can offer satisfaction and guarantees of non-repetition. It further contends, through a detailed case study of the reparations process of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, that ‘letting the state off the hook’ can effectively embolden governments to capitalise on and/or politicise reparations by taking credit for them, thereby, having a detrimental effect on their transformative potential.

• Kochanski, Adam, and Joanna R. Quinn. 2021. “Letting the state off the hook? Dilemmas of holding the state to account in times of transition.” Peacebuilding 9 (2): 103–13.

Abstract
Transitional justice has become a key component of the larger peacebuilding project. State responsibility for wrongful acts has been recognised; it is expected that justice, truth, reparations, and guarantees of non-repetition will be addressed after conflict or political unrest. However, governments routinely flout these responsibilities, because either their resources are depleted, or they are reluctant to enact potentially disadvantageous policies. In these cases, other actors – both global and local, state and non-state – step in to fill the resulting implementation gap, assuming, and oftentimes absolving, the state of its obligations. The contributions to this special issue on Cambodia, Colombia, Solomon Islands, South Korea, Tunisia, and Uganda dissect the ethical, normative, and political implications of letting the state off the hook – or, alternatively, how local actions are getting it on the hook – and point to dilemmas of scaling and the legitimacy of actors, timing and sequencing, and navigating a hostile political environment. 

• Kochanski, Adam. 202o. “The Missing Picture: Accounting for Sexual and Gender-Based Violence during Cambodia’s ‘Other’ Conflict Periods.” International Journal of Transitional Justice 14 (3): 504–23.

Abstract
Local transitional justice (TJ) processes have performed an invaluable function in raising awareness about conflict-related sexual and gender-based violence. While locally-rooted praxis has been increasingly suggested as an alternative to the top-down approach to TJ, which is prone to interference, this article argues that well-intentioned local initiatives can also be distorted through discursive framing tactics that set boundaries on discussions of conflict-related events and obfuscate who can be deemed responsible. In Cambodia, this has meant a partial account of sexual and gender-based violence—one that is limited to the three-year, eight-month and 20-day rule of the Khmer Rouge and that marginalizes survivor experiences from other episodes of the 3o-year-long internal conflict. This article explores and traces the unintended consequences of this discursive frame on three local TJ efforts to address the legacy of conflict-related sexual and gender-based violence: forum theatre, women’s hearings and testimonial therapy.

• Kochanski, Adam. 2020. “Mandating Truth: Patterns and Trends in Truth Commission Design.” Human Rights Review 21 (2): 113–37.

Abstract
Truth commissions (TCs) are increasingly common after conflict and authoritarian rule, yet we know little about the different ways they are being used. Despite recent efforts to bridge conceptual gaps and resolve disagreement over the universe of cases, TCs are notoriously undertheorised and proponents have yet to answer why their record is so inconsistent. Through developing a typological approach to TCs, the article lays the groundwork for exploring the forms they need to take to have an impact. It argues for a more nuanced understanding of the term that captures both the breadth of current practice and recasts conceptual debates on the spectrum of design options that are available to policymakers but are often overlooked. The findings are important as they offer a first set of impressions on emerging spatial and temporal patterns and trends that are developing due to the purported transnational diffusion and social learning of ideas about TCs.

• Kochanski, Adam. 2020. “The ‘Local Turn’ in Transitional Justice: Curb the Enthusiasm.” International Studies Review 22 (1): 26–50.

Abstract
Recent years have witnessed a “local turn” in the study and practice of peacebuilding, international development, and transitional justice (TJ) that has emphasized the importance of local-level knowledge and initiatives. The proliferation of customary, locally rooted TJ processes in states that have experienced violence is a part of this trend. While most studies have taken a sanguine view of the cultural and practical advantages of local TJ, this article contends that existing scholarship neglects the influence of asymmetric power relations and political motivations that have the potential to distort these processes. This article invites a more nuanced discussion of local TJ, rooted in systematic and comparative scholarship of how these processes actually operate on the ground, in order to improve understandings of their promise and perils.

Book Chapters

• Kochanski, Adam. 2023. “Truth Commissions.” In Research Handbook on Transitional Justice, edited by Cheryl Lawther and Luke Moffett, 247–262. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing.

Special Issues

• Kochanski, Adam, Emily K. M. Scott, and Jennifer Welsh, eds. “Localization in World Politics.” Global Studies Quarterly (forthcoming).

• Kochanski, Adam, and Joanna R. Quinn, eds. 2021. “Letting the State off the Hook: The Role of Non-State Actors in Peace and Justice Provision.” Special issue, Peacebuilding 9 (2): 103–242.

Book Reviews

• Kochanski, Adam. 2022. “Locating the Short Circuit: Everyday Peace as a Conduit for Conflict Disruption.” International Studies Review 24 (3), viac031.

• Kochanski, Adam. 2012. “David A. Lake, Hierarchy in International Relations.” Millennium: Journal of International Studies 40 (2): 391–92.

Works in Progress

Book Manuscript
• Framing Atrocity: The Politics of Local Transitional Justice

Articles in Preparation
• “Localization in World Politics: Bridging Theory and Practice” (in preparation with Emily K. M. Scott and Jennifer Welsh)
• “Truth Recovery” (invited chapter for the Encyclopedia on Law and Peace, edited by Louis Mallinder, Rachel Killean, and Lauren Dempster)
• “Saving Transitional Justice” (in preparation)
• “Democratic Backsliding in Mozambique: The Afterlives of Amnesties” (in preparation with Corinna Jentzsch)
• “International Norms and Practices” (in preparation with Merve Erdilmen)