Ongoing Research
Holding Their Feet to the Fire: Negotiated Accountability in the Shadow of the International Community
Book Project
Threats and Commitments: International Tribunals and Domestic Trials in Peace Negotiations
Does the threat of intervention from the International Criminal Court (ICC) affect the agreements parties to a civil conflict make, especially regarding matters of accountability? In this paper, I argue that international criminal tribunals in general – and the ICC in particular – place a unique pressure on domestic elites negotiating peace in the wake of political violence. In order to avoid going to trial in the international arena, elites facing the threat of intervention have an incentive to agree to implement some form of domestic accountability in order to show that they can handle their own business. I evaluate my argument using data on the content of peace agreements negotiated between 2002 and 2019. I find that both the threat of ICC intervention and intervention itself increase the probability that negotiators commit to accountability during peace processes. To explore potential mechanisms, I draw on case studies from Colombia and Sudan.
Racial Justice as Transitional Justice: Human Rights and Public Support for Racial Justice Initiatives in the United States with Geneva Cole
Does framing racial justice policies as part of a broader human rights-oriented movement increase public support for enacting reforms? Recent media coverage of racial justice initiatives in the U.S. has been controversial. Even ideologically sympathetic politicians have criticized demands like defund the police and reparations to Black Americans. In this paper, we focus specifically on racial justice policies associated with defunding the police that reallocate police budgets to things like community and social services. We use a survey experiment to test whether framing these initiatives as part of an international movement around transitional justice affects support for these policies among the American public. Our results largely confirm that framing racial justice policies as transitional justice can increase support, especially among non-Republicans. This has important implications for researchers analyzing state-centered approaches to justice in the United States, and for activists seeking to garner support for racial justice policies.
Related: Scope Conditions Podcast Episode 2.10: "Defunding the Police" as Transitional Justice
Radical or Resonant? How Americans Understand Defunding the Police with Geneva Cole
The phrase "defund the police'" has become a rallying cry in contemporary discussions on police reform and social justice in the United States. Scholars, activists, and pundits offer different interpretations of what the slogan means and there is no unified definition—and yet, #defundthepolice still has mobilizing power. In this paper, we analyze how Americans understand the phrase "defund the police" using open-ended free write survey responses. We argue that supporters and opponents of police reform have very different understandings of what the slogan means, both in terms of content and sentiment attached to the content. Using topic and sentiment analysis, we find important variations both in how Americans understand the phrase, and how it makes them feel. Looking more closely at the free write responses, we find that emotions play an important role, and that they manifest differently for supporters and opponents. This research has implications for scholars who seek a more nuanced understanding of public opinion around contentious issues and for policymakers endeavoring to advance racial justice.
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 challenge because 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 one-shot instances of dealing with the past. Among transitional justice mechanisms, we focus on truth commissions, one of the most popular mechanisms of dealing with authoritarian pasts in the last fifty years. We propose one possible mechanism through which truth commissions can enhance democratic quality, arguing that transparency regimes, such as truth commissions, reveal “skeletons in politicians’ closets” that could be used as kompromat to extract policy concessions from compromised politicians in exchange for silence. According to this logic, transparency regimes result in less corrupt politics and better quality of democratic representation. To corroborate this claim, we disaggregate the truth commission process into a series events that ad- vance 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 then use a difference-in-difference set-up to identify the causal link be- tween truth commissions and political corruption on a panel dataset of 81 countries that transitioned to democracy since 1946.
Transitional Justice Against Agents of Repression and the Threat of Regime Change with Monika Nalepa, Ben Konstan, and Jordi Vasquez (pdf)
We investigate the phenomenon of authoritarian backlash following the prosecution of agents of the former authoritarian regime after its democratic transition. Our model separates criminal transitional justice targeting low-ranking agents of repression from the prosecutions of leaders, who issue orders to repress. We show that targeting low-ranking agents of repression increases their incentives for supporting coup leaders planning authoritarian take-overs. We test our model’s predictions using the Global Transitional Justice Dataset, which reports prosecutions over time and includes information on the rank of defendants. This information allows us to construct an original independent variable: the proportion of leaders that stood trial as a percentage of all criminal trials against former perpetrators, what we call the “skewness of justice.” We demonstrate that although coup attempts are not affected by the skewness of justice, successful coups are. More detailed case studies of Argentina and Egypt illustrate our argument and the mechanism at play.
What is the Effect of Personnel Transitional Justice on Crime? with Ipek Cinar, Monika Nalepa, and Evgenia Olimpieva
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 remove 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.
Book Project
Threats and Commitments: International Tribunals and Domestic Trials in Peace Negotiations
Does the threat of intervention from the International Criminal Court (ICC) affect the agreements parties to a civil conflict make, especially regarding matters of accountability? In this paper, I argue that international criminal tribunals in general – and the ICC in particular – place a unique pressure on domestic elites negotiating peace in the wake of political violence. In order to avoid going to trial in the international arena, elites facing the threat of intervention have an incentive to agree to implement some form of domestic accountability in order to show that they can handle their own business. I evaluate my argument using data on the content of peace agreements negotiated between 2002 and 2019. I find that both the threat of ICC intervention and intervention itself increase the probability that negotiators commit to accountability during peace processes. To explore potential mechanisms, I draw on case studies from Colombia and Sudan.
Racial Justice as Transitional Justice: Human Rights and Public Support for Racial Justice Initiatives in the United States with Geneva Cole
Does framing racial justice policies as part of a broader human rights-oriented movement increase public support for enacting reforms? Recent media coverage of racial justice initiatives in the U.S. has been controversial. Even ideologically sympathetic politicians have criticized demands like defund the police and reparations to Black Americans. In this paper, we focus specifically on racial justice policies associated with defunding the police that reallocate police budgets to things like community and social services. We use a survey experiment to test whether framing these initiatives as part of an international movement around transitional justice affects support for these policies among the American public. Our results largely confirm that framing racial justice policies as transitional justice can increase support, especially among non-Republicans. This has important implications for researchers analyzing state-centered approaches to justice in the United States, and for activists seeking to garner support for racial justice policies.
Related: Scope Conditions Podcast Episode 2.10: "Defunding the Police" as Transitional Justice
Radical or Resonant? How Americans Understand Defunding the Police with Geneva Cole
The phrase "defund the police'" has become a rallying cry in contemporary discussions on police reform and social justice in the United States. Scholars, activists, and pundits offer different interpretations of what the slogan means and there is no unified definition—and yet, #defundthepolice still has mobilizing power. In this paper, we analyze how Americans understand the phrase "defund the police" using open-ended free write survey responses. We argue that supporters and opponents of police reform have very different understandings of what the slogan means, both in terms of content and sentiment attached to the content. Using topic and sentiment analysis, we find important variations both in how Americans understand the phrase, and how it makes them feel. Looking more closely at the free write responses, we find that emotions play an important role, and that they manifest differently for supporters and opponents. This research has implications for scholars who seek a more nuanced understanding of public opinion around contentious issues and for policymakers endeavoring to advance racial justice.
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 challenge because 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 one-shot instances of dealing with the past. Among transitional justice mechanisms, we focus on truth commissions, one of the most popular mechanisms of dealing with authoritarian pasts in the last fifty years. We propose one possible mechanism through which truth commissions can enhance democratic quality, arguing that transparency regimes, such as truth commissions, reveal “skeletons in politicians’ closets” that could be used as kompromat to extract policy concessions from compromised politicians in exchange for silence. According to this logic, transparency regimes result in less corrupt politics and better quality of democratic representation. To corroborate this claim, we disaggregate the truth commission process into a series events that ad- vance 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 then use a difference-in-difference set-up to identify the causal link be- tween truth commissions and political corruption on a panel dataset of 81 countries that transitioned to democracy since 1946.
Transitional Justice Against Agents of Repression and the Threat of Regime Change with Monika Nalepa, Ben Konstan, and Jordi Vasquez (pdf)
We investigate the phenomenon of authoritarian backlash following the prosecution of agents of the former authoritarian regime after its democratic transition. Our model separates criminal transitional justice targeting low-ranking agents of repression from the prosecutions of leaders, who issue orders to repress. We show that targeting low-ranking agents of repression increases their incentives for supporting coup leaders planning authoritarian take-overs. We test our model’s predictions using the Global Transitional Justice Dataset, which reports prosecutions over time and includes information on the rank of defendants. This information allows us to construct an original independent variable: the proportion of leaders that stood trial as a percentage of all criminal trials against former perpetrators, what we call the “skewness of justice.” We demonstrate that although coup attempts are not affected by the skewness of justice, successful coups are. More detailed case studies of Argentina and Egypt illustrate our argument and the mechanism at play.
What is the Effect of Personnel Transitional Justice on Crime? with Ipek Cinar, Monika Nalepa, and Evgenia Olimpieva
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 remove 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.