The impact of state abdication on transitional justice: when non-state actors and other states fill the post-transition gap

ABSTRACT When the state fails to carry out the duties it would normally fulfil in the post-conflict period, non-state actors eventually step in to fill the gaps. Such processes ultimately come to stand in for official state response. While this seems like a fairly innocuous turn of events, there are consequences to the substitution of civil society-run post-conflict rebuilding that are rarely unpacked. The literature has so far not taken up what is a fairly serious issue: By letting the state off the hook, citizens’ needs are never appropriately met; governments are able to continue with other areas of foci – including carrying on with acts of war and human rights abuses and official responsibility is never taken.