Introductory paper in this working paper series sets the stage, presenting the main doctrinal assumptions regarding the role of constitutional courts in democratic transitions and addressing methodological challenges of, and possible avenues for, assessing the role of constitutional courts in transitional contexts.

The paper was produced within a regional research project that examines the contribution of constitutional courts to democratic transition in five successor states of the former Yugoslavia: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia and Serbia. The key questions the project attempted to address are whether, how, under what conditions, and with what consequences the constitutional courts have positioned themselves as true agents of legal, social and political change in this part of Europe.

This publication is produced within the project “Courts as Policy-Makers?: Examining the Role of Constitutional Courts as Agents of Change in the Western Balkans”, implemented from 2014 to 2016 by Center for Social Research Analitika, in cooperation with Belgrade Centre for Human Rights, Group for Legal and Political Studies from Kosovo and CRPM – Center for Research and Policy Making from Macedonia.

The research project was implemented with the financial support of the Regional Research Promotion Programme (RRPP)(link is external). The RRPP is coordinated and operated by the Interfaculty Institute for Central and Eastern Europe (IICEE) at the university of Fribourg (Switzerland). The programme is fully funded by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), Federal Department of Foreign Affairs.