Monograph
​Best Dissertation in Human Rights
American Political Science Association, 2022
Lynne Rienner Publishers Award for Best Dissertation in Human Rights
International Studies Association, 2022
Lawrence S. Finkelstein Prize in International Organization
International Studies Association, 2021
Governing Truth: NGOs and the Politics of Transitional Justice
Kelebogile Zvobgo
Preorder from Oxford University Press (hardcover, paperback)
Who governs transitional justice—the international regime that aims to deliver truth, justice, and reparations for political violence and guarantees that the violence will not be repeated? Existing research tends to suggest that the adoption, design, and implementation of transitional justice mechanisms are primarily, if not exclusively, shaped by national governments. In Governing Truth, Kelebogile Zvobgo argues instead that transitional justice is transnational and led by civil society groups, both domestic and international.
The book draws on statistical analyses of original data on truth commissions and interviews with government officials, former commission leaders, representatives of international organizations and NGOs, and human rights stakeholders from around the world. Zvobgo demonstrates that a worldwide network of civil society groups—the global transitional justice network—leverages advocacy, technical expertise, and operational assistance to give governments the impetus to adopt transitional justice mechanisms, design them to succeed, and follow up on them with additional measures. In a strategic system of coordination, civil society groups alternate leadership and support roles and exercise their comparative advantages in information, experience, material resources, and political power at different stages to enhance their overall chances of success. Governing Truth thus proposes a new model of transnational advocacy—the burden sharing model—which goes beyond policy advocacy and brings attention to civil society's essential role in policy design, delivery, and follow-up in transitional justice processes.
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[Supplementary Materials] [Data]
Edited Collections
​The Oxford Handbook of Norms Research in International Relations​​
Phil Orchard, Antje Wiener & Sassan Gholiagha, handbook editors
Preorder from Oxford University Press (hardcover)
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​The Oxford Handbook of Norms Research in International Relations ​​provides a state-of-the-art overview of past, current, and future norms research in International Relations. It provides a comprehensive overview of the toolbox that has developed over this time, mapping the field's development based on key conceptual milestones, notable theoretical moves, and developments with regard to the field's contribution to social science theory development on the one hand and politics and policymaking in world politics on the other.
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Section 1: A History of Norms Research
Wayne Sandholtz & Kelebogile Zvobgo, section editors
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The International Norms Enterprise, W. Sandholtz & K. Zvobgo
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Norms, Legitimacy, and Compliance, E. Yildiz & I. Silagy
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International Norms and Domestic Politics, L. García Iommi & A. Vilán
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The Nuclear Taboo: A Global Prohibitionary Norm, N. Tannenwald
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Race and Racism in Norms Research, A. Klotz
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Whose Norms Matter? Challenging Power in Global Climate Governance, D. Cantwell-Chavez
The Afterlives of Transitional Justice
2025 Special Issue of the International Journal of Transitional Justice
Kelebogile Zvobgo & Francesca Parente, guest editors
Available from Oxford University Press
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The Afterlives of Transitional Justice, K. Zvobgo & F. Parente
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'The Strength Even to Comprehend the Incomprehensible': Rereading Adorno in the Age of Authoritarian Resurgence, O. Bakiner​
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Transitional Justice and the Problem of Democratic Decline​, G. Dancy & O. T. Thoms
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Public Attitudes toward On-Going Transitional Justice in Latvia: Sometimes More Isn’t Better, C. M. Horne
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Divisive Documents: Exploring the Local Impact of Legal Documents in Transitional Justice Contexts, S. Budhoo​
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The State of Repair: The International Norm of Reparations between Aspirations and Expectations, M. Ben-Josef Hirsch & J. M. Dixon
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Difficult Stories that Haunt: Towards Research Otherwise in Transitional Justice, U. Lühe & E. Baines
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Breaking the Echo Chambers of Transitional Justice and TWAIL: An Intellectual and Policy Exchange, N. Aboueldahab
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The (Many) Afterlives of Transitional Justice: Practice-based Insights on Continuity, Impact and Evolving Justice Struggles, T. Destrooper & E. Evrard​
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Listening and Preparing the Society to Engage: The Case of the Colombian Truth Commission and Its Legacy Strategy, M. P. Prada Ramírez & L. Wingender​
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'Too Long a Sacrifice?': Post-Transitional Justice and the Afterlives of Authoritarianism, C. Collins & S. Durdiyeva
In Progress​
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Innovations in Human Rights: Concepts, Data, and Measurement (co-edited with Francesca Parente). Edward Elgar Publishing.
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With authoritarianism and political violence on the rise in our world today, a deeper understanding of human rights issues such as repression, compliance, and justice is critical. But these issues are difficult to conceptualize, quantify, and systematically analyze. This volume showcases the work of a group of scholars advancing quantitative and mixed-methods research in human rights, offering fellow scholars a practical framework to apply in their research and incorporate into their teaching of human rights, international law, international organizations, and research methods at the graduate level. Strong research is driven by substance, not methods. Accordingly, contributors to this volume have carefully considered what concepts they want to capture, substantively, and then undertaken intensive data collections resulting in new measures, datasets, and types of analysis. The contributors present data of various types in descriptive and analytical studies, and highlight puzzles and questions for future research.​
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2027 Special Issue of the Journal of Human Rights: Local Human Rights in the United States (co-edited with Francesca Parente).
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​Human rights scholarship has largely elided the United States in theory development and empirical analysis. There are a range of possible explanations for why this has been the case, including that the United States is a democracy, is an exceptional nation, and generally does not participate in the international human rights regime. Yet recent events have shown that U.S. democracy is much more fraught and contentious than previously assumed. Moreover, the country faces many of the same human rights challenges as other countries around the world, and therefore can and should be studied alongside them. Besides, U.S. human rights practices can be studied even in areas where the government has not made international human rights commitments; progress is being made on a local level despite, or even because of, the lack of commitment at the national level. This special issue argues that there is much that we can and should learn from the U.S. case, especially from subnational analyses. The contributions underline the importance of examining subnational variation in human rights attitudes, postures, and performance, both in the United States and elsewhere.​​