Geoff Dancy

The TJET project offers a comprehensive database for exploring the supply of transitional justice (TJ) in every country of the world. TJET provides detailed descriptive information on domestic, foreign, and international prosecutions; truth commissions; reparations policies; vetting policies; amnesty laws and offers; and UN investigations. This article describes TJET’s quantitative dataset, consisting of longitudinal data from 1970 to 2020, with over 400 measures related to the design and operation of TJ mechanisms. Because TJ has become integral to discussions related to democracy and rule of law promotion, as well as peacebuilding, it is necessary that researchers and practitioners use the most comprehensive information possible for grounding their analysis and advocacy. The TJET dataset is unique not only in its global coverage, but also in its custom sampling feature, allowing users to select which types of cases to compare. This article provides descriptive data on TJ attributes, analysis of new trends, and an examination of the temporal relationship between different TJ mechanisms.

∞: When transitional justice emerged as a field of practice amid the third wave of democracy, many hoped it would reinforce the rules and norms that prevent democratic decline. However, over half of all the democracies that transitioned from autocracy or experienced civil war in the last half-century have since undergone backsliding or breakdown. Is transitional justice partly to blame? This article theorizes six ways that transitional justice might contribute to democratic decline, or alternatively, to democratic progress. It then analyzes data from 118 democratic spells in 89 countries spanning 1970 to 2023 to evaluate which hypotheses are plausible. In line with theories focused on endogenous change, the findings suggest that transitional justice is actually associated with stronger electoral and judicial institutions, which reinforces the guardrails of democracy against autocratic reversion. Yet, while transitional justice might help prevent full democratic breakdown, it does not hinder democratic backsliding, particularly that which is driven by government restrictions on civic association.

Does punishment by international courts prevent atrocity? While many commentators are skeptical about the potential of international courts to prevent atrocity, social science regularly finds that international criminal law has positive impacts. But we still do not know why. In this chapter, I develop and test a theory that international punishment prevents violence through the expression of norms. First, I clarify the distinction between three concepts: prevention, deterrence, and expression. In short, the prevention of atrocity constitutes the main goal of international courts, while deterrence (raising the cost of crime) and expression (communicating norms) represent two separate mechanisms for achieving that goal. Second, I argue that criminal sentencing primarily serves an expressivist, not a deterrent, function. Third, I construct cross-national regression models which find that the extensiveness of punishment by international courts is associated with less atrocity-level violence over time. Ultimately, evidence suggests that international punishment generally prevents violence through the expression of norms.

Where is the human rights discourse most resonant? We use aggregated cross-national Google search data to test two divergent accounts of why human rights appeal to some populations but not others. The top-down model predicts that nationwide interest in human rights is attributable mainly to external factors such as foreign direct investment, transnational NGO campaigns, or international legalization, whereas the bottom-up model highlights the importance of internal factors such as economic growth and persistent repression. We find more evidence for the latter model: not only is interest in human rights more concentrated in the Global South, but the discourse is also most resonant where people face regular state violence. In drawing these inferences, this article confronts high-level debates over whether human rights will remain relevant in the future, and whether the discourse still animates counter-hegemonic modes of resistance. The answer to both questions, our research suggests, is “yes.”

In states emerging from mass violence and human rights abuses, do individuals prefer retributive punishment of perpetrators through trials, or do they wish to be compensated with land or monetary reparations for their injuries? How does the concrete option of prosecutions by the International Criminal Court (ICC) moderate these preferences? Using unique survey data from 507 Kenyans collected in 2015, we build on and add nuance to the empirical literature that interrogates the link between exposure to mass violence and post-conflict justice preferences. We find that while some individuals prefer reparative justice, victims and witnesses generally want perpetrators to be prosecuted. Even for those who are co-ethnics of government leaders – who allegedly instigated widespread killing, sexual assaults and displacements – direct exposure to those acts leads to greater desire for prosecutions. We further find that one’s personal experience with violence also leads one to reject domestic justice in favor of international justice: victims and witnesses who favored retributive justice are highly likely to believe that the ICC is the best option for prosecuting perpetrators.

This article presents and tests an original theory that truth commissions (TCs) inspire democratic behaviors, but have little discernible impact on democratic institutions. Using quantitative analyses of countries undergoing transitions between 1970 and 2015, and accounting for endogeneity of TCs, we find that these temporary bodies are associated with greater democratic participation and state agent observance of physical integrity rights. However, they have no measurable effect on institutions like fair elections, rules regulating political association, liberal checks on the executive, or judicial independence. This contradicts a key argument in the transitional justice literature that TCs catalyze institutional reform through investigation and extensive recommendations. This article’s findings might encourage those who intend to use these bodies as a tool to promote citizen activism or police restraint. However, the findings might discourage those who hope TCs could jump-start judicial reforms or create a firewall against executive overreach.

Commentators now regularly declare that the International Criminal court (ICC) – and international criminal law as a whole – is in crisis. It is certainly the case that the ICC faces a number of operational challenges, and that these challenges worry its defenders. However, one unexamined rationalist assumption is that the Court’s inability to deliver consistent outputs will mean waning influence. This article explores an alternative constructivist theory that the ICC produces diffuse social impacts that are not necessarily tied to its operating effectively. This theory is tested statistically using Google Trends data. Specifically, the article examines whether ICC intervention in a country is associated with more internet search for ‘human rights’. Taking this to be a measure of changing discourse in countries, the article finds that some types of ICC involvement are associated with a far higher interest in human rights, and that this interest only increases as ICC involvement extends in time. In short, despite its disappointments, evidence suggests that the ICC still serves a socio-pedagogical function. Though it does not fit well within a rational evaluation framework, this kind of information should be considered in ICC performance reviews.

The International Criminal Court’s interventions have prompted debate about the wisdom of criminally prosecuting combatants while attempting to build peace in conflict-ridden societies. Previous research fails to distinguish between different types of trials. Using a large-N dataset of three types of criminal trials undertaken during internal conflict – domestic security trials of rebels, domestic human rights trials of state agents, and international war crimes trials of both – this article tests a theory of the compellent effect of criminal prosecution on conflict termination. We find that, even when accounting for endogeneity, rebel trials are associated with a higher probability of conflict termination, while trials of state agents are weakly associated with conflict persistence. We argue that the former compel the opposition to discontinue fighting, while the latter signal to rebels a lack of government resolve. We also find that the effect of international trials, which at times appear weakly associated with conflict termination, is endogenous to international intervention more generally.

Fifty years ago, the world had very few human rights laws and very little information on human rights violations. Today, the situation could not be more different. The world is awash in laws and indicators of legal violations, and two perspectives have developed to explain their relationship. The factualist approach measures whatever information is available, however imperfectly, and assumes that the resulting indicators are valid representations of the theoretical concepts of interest. The constructivist approach reminds us that these processes are not independent and that a science of law and human rights is fallible. Though the conclusions from these perspectives diverge radically, they agree on a central notion: that international human rights law has contributed very little to social progress. We disagree and offer an alternative, constitutive approach that both accepts the critique of indicators and offers a way forward that encourages scholars to treat measurement itself as an object of theorizing and inquiry.

Human rights scholars and activists have often been criticized for being “principled” rather than “pragmatic” actors in international politics. Rarely, though, is such criticism accompanied by a discussion of what pragmatism means, or what pragmatic action looks like. This article conceptually traces and defines three aspects of pragmatism — philosophical, methodological, and political — that might be applied to the global human rights discourse. The article then outlines how these aspects can help resolve debates over human rights beliefs, scientific inquiry, and political action. I argue, first, that critics of human rights do not adequately develop the concept of human rights pragmatism, and then I make the case using examples that human rights discourse already lends itself toward a pragmatic train of thought. The implication of this analysis is that the “pragmatist” critique of human rights actors is, at minimum, unfounded and, at maximum, a mask for more pessimistic anti-rights positions.