Ongoing Research
Holding Their Feet to the Fire: Negotiated Accountability in the Shadow of the International Community
Dissertation
What explains the variation in who is held accountable for the commission of atrocities during conflict? How, if at all, does the threat of International Criminal Court intervention influence the justice mechanisms parties to a conflict agree to implement? This dissertation project unpacks the dilemma parties to a conflict face in the era of a court of last resort: how to minimize the accountability they face when ignoring the international may provoke intervention. While much of the literature remains divided about the effects of international law and the mechanisms by which it shapes domestic political behavior, I argue that under certain conditions, international criminal tribunals in particular can have important effects. Using insights from a formal bargaining model, I argue that the domestic processes established under the shadow of tribunals like the ICC are reflective of international and domestic power politics that can hurt or, under some conditions, actually help those most responsible for atrocity. I evaluate the theory using novel empirical data on the implementation of justice mechanisms, as well two case studies.
Identifying the Causal Effect of Truth Commissions on the Quality of Democratic Representation with Milena Ang and Monika Nalepa (pdf)
Does transitional justice hinder or help democracy? This simple question poses a methodological challenge. Countries choosing to embark on transitional justice may be exactly the ones that would have had a successful pathway to democratization in the first place. We resolve it by measuring transitional justice as a series of events rather than a one shot instances of dealing with the past. We choose a specific kind of transitional justice mechanism—truth commissions—which do in fact unfold over an extended period of time following the transition to democracy. We disaggregate the truth commission process into a series events that advance or hinder the process of disclosing human rights abuses that took place in the past. This method of coding not only allows us to measure their impact on democratic representation, but is also more faithful to the operation of truth commissions on the ground. We propose one possible mechanism through which truth commissions can enhance democratic quality: by creating a transparency regime they can eliminate blackmail with “skeletons in the closet” to extract policy concessions from compromised politicians. In this logic, transparency regimes result in less corrupt politics and better quality of democratic representation. We then use a difference-in-difference set-up to identify the causal link between truth commissions and political corruption on a panel dataset of 81 countries that transitioned to democracy since 1946.
What is the Effect of Personnel Transitional Justice on Crime? with Ipek Cinar, Monika Nalepa, and Evgenia Olimpieva (pdf)
What is the effect of transitional justice on crime in post-authoritarian states? An implicit assumption in the transitional justice literature is that by dealing with the human rights abuses committed by the previous regime, new democracies can improve the quality of human rights practices in the future. Personnel transitional justice, like most forms of transitional justice, should advance respect for human rights and lower crime levels. This should in particular apply to post-authoritarian purges, which re- move staff of former authoritarian agencies, including agents of repression, from institutions of the state. But what happens when entire organizations of the old regime apparatus are purged? Using novel data on transitional justice, we argue that this particular transitional justice process—what we call a thorough purge—can actually hurt human rights practices in the countries that have implemented it. We suggest that by removing entire networks of former authoritarian state officials from office, thorough purges can help lay foundations for the establishment of clandestine criminal organizations, which can, paradoxically, increase crime levels, contrary to the intentions of policymakers in new democracies.
Dissertation
What explains the variation in who is held accountable for the commission of atrocities during conflict? How, if at all, does the threat of International Criminal Court intervention influence the justice mechanisms parties to a conflict agree to implement? This dissertation project unpacks the dilemma parties to a conflict face in the era of a court of last resort: how to minimize the accountability they face when ignoring the international may provoke intervention. While much of the literature remains divided about the effects of international law and the mechanisms by which it shapes domestic political behavior, I argue that under certain conditions, international criminal tribunals in particular can have important effects. Using insights from a formal bargaining model, I argue that the domestic processes established under the shadow of tribunals like the ICC are reflective of international and domestic power politics that can hurt or, under some conditions, actually help those most responsible for atrocity. I evaluate the theory using novel empirical data on the implementation of justice mechanisms, as well two case studies.
Identifying the Causal Effect of Truth Commissions on the Quality of Democratic Representation with Milena Ang and Monika Nalepa (pdf)
Does transitional justice hinder or help democracy? This simple question poses a methodological challenge. Countries choosing to embark on transitional justice may be exactly the ones that would have had a successful pathway to democratization in the first place. We resolve it by measuring transitional justice as a series of events rather than a one shot instances of dealing with the past. We choose a specific kind of transitional justice mechanism—truth commissions—which do in fact unfold over an extended period of time following the transition to democracy. We disaggregate the truth commission process into a series events that advance or hinder the process of disclosing human rights abuses that took place in the past. This method of coding not only allows us to measure their impact on democratic representation, but is also more faithful to the operation of truth commissions on the ground. We propose one possible mechanism through which truth commissions can enhance democratic quality: by creating a transparency regime they can eliminate blackmail with “skeletons in the closet” to extract policy concessions from compromised politicians. In this logic, transparency regimes result in less corrupt politics and better quality of democratic representation. We then use a difference-in-difference set-up to identify the causal link between truth commissions and political corruption on a panel dataset of 81 countries that transitioned to democracy since 1946.
What is the Effect of Personnel Transitional Justice on Crime? with Ipek Cinar, Monika Nalepa, and Evgenia Olimpieva (pdf)
What is the effect of transitional justice on crime in post-authoritarian states? An implicit assumption in the transitional justice literature is that by dealing with the human rights abuses committed by the previous regime, new democracies can improve the quality of human rights practices in the future. Personnel transitional justice, like most forms of transitional justice, should advance respect for human rights and lower crime levels. This should in particular apply to post-authoritarian purges, which re- move staff of former authoritarian agencies, including agents of repression, from institutions of the state. But what happens when entire organizations of the old regime apparatus are purged? Using novel data on transitional justice, we argue that this particular transitional justice process—what we call a thorough purge—can actually hurt human rights practices in the countries that have implemented it. We suggest that by removing entire networks of former authoritarian state officials from office, thorough purges can help lay foundations for the establishment of clandestine criminal organizations, which can, paradoxically, increase crime levels, contrary to the intentions of policymakers in new democracies.
