The Impact of transitional justice measures on democratic institution-building

Countries emerging from authoritarian rule and/or violent conflict face myriad challenges. Chief among them are demands for accountability for past abuses, and the need to build a new, stable, democratic state. Scholars and practitioners continue to debate which of these take priority, or whether in fact one is a necessary precondition for the other. While some recent scholarship suggests that certain transitional justice measures are positively correlated with an improvement in the state of democracy and human rights in transitional states, other scholarship suggests that some transitional justice measures are not linked to improved records of democracy and human rights. This project will examine the experiences of eight countries: South Korea, Japan, Brazil, Chile, Sierra Leone, Burundi, Hungary, and Germany, in four regions: Asia, Africa, Latin America, and Europe. All have experienced different types of violence and repression and undergone different types of transition, in different regional and international geopolotical circumstances. Using qualitative methods including field research, secondary research, and incorporating insights from quantitative research, this comparative project will develop new insights regarding the impact of transitional justice measures specifically on democratic institution-building. As such, it will contribute to the growing scholarship on the effects of transitional justice and provide insights for policymakers at the local, state, and international level regarding the role of various transitional justice measures.

The research is designed to have an impact beyond academic researchers, upon both international policymakers involved in promoting democracy and institutional reform and transitional justice measures, and upon domestic policymakers and non-governmental organization activists in the countries of study.

It will do so both by including these actors as participants, as interview subjects and conference/workshop participants included to help review project findings, and by designing specific outputs for those actors.

Among the individuals to be interviewed will be the international policymakers active in designing and funding processes of democratization and transitional justice, including experts within the UK's Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) and Department for International Development (DfID) and the United Nations. Equivalent policymakers will be interviewed by research partners in the Netherlands and Germany. Researchers will also interview national and NGO policymakers in the countries of study.

These same policymakers will be included as participants in several of the meetings to be convened by the collaborating researchers. A meeting with development actors will be held in London, to review the research findings to date with key end users including experts from the Foreign Office and the Department for International Development as well as relevant NGO experts. A meeting will be held in Geneva to launch findings with intergovernmental and nongovernmental organizations. Representatives of relevant experts and governmental and nongovernmental officials will be present at not only these meetings but also in core group meetings held in the Netherlands and the UK.

Finally, the project will develop specific outputs for policymakers, namely policy papers. Drawing upon the scholarly research in the project, the papers will identify key lessons learned and implications for policymakers at national and international levels in easily-accessible formats. These papers will be produced by each partner to the project and disseminated on the project's website. These will also be disseminated in printed and electronic form to the global networks of experts and policymakers developed by the principal investigator and the Dutch partner in the research.