They must defend unique links and a solvent alternative. Nitty-gritty questions of feasible implementation are key to fairly evaluate the alt and prevent it from devolving into utopianism.

The next question raised by Cox’s argument that critical theory must limit the range of choices to ‘alternative orders which are feasible transformations of the existing world’ is how we assess feasibility, or on what basis we are to ‘reject improbable alternatives.’72 More specifically, referring back to the continuum of transitional justice possibilities (Table 1), the question is whether any of the outlined alternatives can rightly be rejected as ‘improbable’ or ‘infeasible.’ The short if unsatisfying answer is that much depends on the particularities of context, including the legal, political, economic and cultural dynamics with which a particular approach to transitional justice might be expected to engage (and of which it is a part). In assessing whether a thinner or thicker approach to transitional justice is possible or probable, and whether that approach is likely to have much of a chance of disrupting the postconflict status quo, one would need to look at a range of context-specific factors, including: the nature of existing elites and their resistance to change; whether there is a history of democracy and strong institutions; the level of economic development and the nature of the economy; the nature of the victims of conflict, their perpetrators and the abuses that were suffered; and the strength of victim and civil society networks.

Thus, for example, even if critical theorists are correct that the ‘constructed invisibility’ of the economic within paradigmatic transitional justice is a matter of deepseated neoliberal ideology,73 the question of whether and to what extent an embrace of economic justice is possible will still require careful analysis of these and other contextual factors. Such factors may in turn suggest the feasibility of a comparatively broad approach to economic justice involving fundamental questions of redistribution, or perhaps only a narrow approach to economic justice involving the selective prosecution of economic crimes of corruption and violations of economic and social rights that rise to the level of a war crime.74 For this reason, abstract debates about the value of paradigmatic transitional justice versus one of the other possibilities outlined in Table 1 are unlikely to advance the discussion at this stage. To move forward, the current critical theory debates need to do more to engage with the difficult tradeoffs, policy choices and contextual realities that would inevitably be associated with efforts to implement an alternative vision of transitional justice.

Once again, this suggests that too sharp a delineation between critical and problem-solving theory is unhelpful. After all, how can feasibility be determined – how can ‘improbable alternatives’ be rejected – without engaging with some of the nitty-gritty questions associated with the potential implementation and implications of a particular critical vision?75 Cox himself explains that ‘critical theory contains problem-solving theories within itself,’ but curiously notes that this is only to ‘contain’ and point to the ‘conservative consequences’ inherent in problem-solving theories – and not because of any usefulness they might have ‘as guides to action.’76 In this way, Cox does not offer much of a bridge between critical and problem-solving theory. Perhaps it would have been difficult for him to do otherwise insofar as problem-solving theory has been defined as inherently status quo preserving. Irrespective of the label applied, however, it would seem that if critical theory is to constrain its potential utopianism, as Cox argues it must, then an analysis of tactical and strategic policy questions associated with ‘real world’ implementation – and at higher level of detail than is typical of most critical studies literature – is required. This could be thought of as ‘critically motivated problem-solving.’ Unlike Cox’s problem-solving theory, critically motivated problem-solving makes no pretension to being ‘value free.’ 77 And unlike most critical theory, critically motivated problem-solving is keyed to understanding ‘the how’ of bringing about the potential alternative orders for which critical theory has provided a very rough sketch. In other words, it sweats some of the small stuff that critical theory famously ignores. Critically motivated problem-solving theory can be modeled as a spiral that corkscrews around the continuum of critique represented in Figure 1, helping to push things in one direction or another. Critical theory and critically motivated problem-solving theory then come together in sustained and close conversation as integrated critique (Figure 2).