Heroes, Courts and Normative Clashes: The Different Effects of the Icty and Domestic War Crimes Trials on Norm Change in Croatia.

This paper investigates how different types of war crimes trials have influenced norm building in Croatia. The main theoretical assumption guiding the study is that the traditional and principal aims of war crimes trials, those of retribution and deterrence, lack the capability to instigate significant normative and cultural change in society, which may be required. Despite the Croatian state generally complying with the international demands for transitional justice put on it, primarily from the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), there has been little cultural change associated with this.

This particular paper will present the results of the focus groups and interviews held in Croatia in 2014 (currently ongoing). These target high school history teachers, pensioners and members of war veterans’ groups in three cities and several non-urban locations.  The particular normative dynamic studied is that between the commitment to the Croatian war narrative versus the commitment to a fact-finding effort. The war narrative forms an important founding, or refounding, myth in Croatia. It is also present in an institutionalized form in the Declaration on the Homeland War, issued by the government in 2000 and still legally valid today.