Culture and Transitional Justice

Even though scholars were hopeful that international trade and the rise of human rights institution was making interstate conflict a thing of the past, we are once again starting to see a rise in coups, interstate wars, and genocides. A lot of research has been done on atrocities in the past and efforts to prevent atrocities and provide justice in their wake. Scholars of  transitional justice  have often talked about how important cultural awareness and sensitivity is when dealing with a society that has just survived a conflict or atrocity. However, there is a lack of hard numbers to tell us which  mechanisms  of transitional justice work the best or in  what contexts . Learning more about this could provide decisionmakers with the information they need to create data backed policies which actually reduce harm and create lasting peace in these war-torn regions.

After an atrocity, conflict, or the fall of a regime which perpetrated human rights abuses, a number of activities, mechanisms, and processes can be employed to attempt to secure justice for those who were harmed, and to transition the government of a state towards a stable liberal democracy. This is known as Transitional Justice.

Some transitional justice scholars are already arguing that research on the topic has focused too much on the actions and impacts of social institutions and not enough on culture, even though culture has a uniquely symbiotic relationship with transitional justice (de Grieff, 2014). Deciding how to apply transitional justice to restore a community requires an understanding of how the cracks formed in the first place (Mani, 2008). Often, there are cultural reasons for a conflict. For example, when a long history of cultural injustices pushes marginalized people to the point where they are willing to engage in violence or support a coup (Mani, 2008; Pasipanyoda, 2008a). Opening intercultural dialogue may be the only way to guarantee non-repetition when cultural disrespect or friction was the primary cause of a crisis (Cole & Lee, 2014; Ramírez-Barat, 2014).

In general, any form of transitional justice you apply is going to require cultural context for how a community feels about death, war, punishment, justice, money, honesty, authority, interpersonal relationships, mourning, and forgiveness. When applied incorrectly, without respect or concern for what a specific society really needs to heal and rebuild, the justice mechanisms put in place after a conflict can cause more resentment and pain, contribute to instability, and push a fragile new nation down a path of democratic backsliding.

Under the umbrella of Transitional Justice are five main categories of justice mechanisms - amnesty, lustration, reparations, trials, and truth commissions. Each of these mechanisms targets a different problem which results from prolonged and violent conflict.

Amnesty - sometimes merciful, sometimes pragmatic, amnesty is designed to select certain members of a perpetrator group for amnesty: legal forgiveness or immunity from future prosecution for their crimes. Justice actors choose this mechanism in exchange for valuable testimony against high-level offenders, to demonstrate a commitment to an end of violence and bloodshed, or when they need to maintain the stability of a region by permitting some perpetrators to continue work in necessary capacities such as civil service positions. In simple terms, the goal of amnesty is stability.

Lustration - also referred to more simply as vetting, lustration involves a formalized and highly thorough screening process to prevent individuals who were involved in the perpetration of human rights abuses or supporting an oppressive regime from holding office in the new government. In simple terms, the goal of lustration is non-repetition.

Trials - this mechanism is much like any other kind of trial, however, trials in the transitional justice context may involve oversight from international actors like the  ICJ  (the International Court of Justice), and often focuses on actors who might not otherwise have been tried for their actions, such as heads of state. Punishments for war crimes and human rights violations are usually very severe, including life sentences or even execution. In simple terms, the goal of trials is retribution.

Truth Commissions - these are formalized endeavors to gather evidence including photos, records, administrative data, forensics, witness testimony, and perpetrator testimony in order to create an authentic narrative of how an atrocity or conflict came to be. Then, that narrative is translated into the most relevant format for the context (comic books, leaflets, films, journal articles, news articles, etc.,) and distributed to the public. In simple terms, the goal of a truth commission is transparency.

Reparations - whether moral (apologies, creation of monuments or memorials, etc.) or material (financial awards, discounted access to education, healthcare, or housing, etc.), reparations are provided in an attempt to help a victimized group regain the stability, health, and security that they had before an atrocity occurred. In simple terms, the goal of reparations is restitution.

Many experts recommend these mechanisms be applied in collaboration, but there isn't always the capacity, resources, or even will to do so. However, states almost always have to choose something in order to maintain stability. When they can't do everything, which mechanisms a state chooses to apply is reflective of the values and goals that are important to them. If you had to choose, what is most important to a fragile, war-torn, new democracy; stability, non-repetition, retribution, transparency, or restitution? What does that choice say about a society's values? And can the answers to how certain societies make that choice inform how we make hard choices like that in the future?

One way to try to find out that information is to pose a research question - Which cultural values impact the post-conflict justice mechanisms a state chooses to apply? Do specific religious or moral beliefs, a stronger emphasis on collectivism versus individualism, or a population’s level of trust in authority and government have the greatest impact on how a state moves forward after atrocities and violence?

Almost of the data we need to understand these connections has been collected already. Scholars have discovered innovative ways to quantify and aggregate political views, cultural norms, and national values, and transitional justice process have been well documented. But ultimately, numbers on a page struggle to fully tell a story this complex. By looking at maps and visualizing the patterns and the connections between culturally similar regions and the choices they make in democratic transitions, we can start to actually understand what we need to learn much better than by just reading off statistics and correlations. When we find two extremely similar states which made different choices, we can compare the effectiveness of the two and learn how to make better choices in the future. And there is no better way to quickly add huge amounts of data to a map and translate it to an accessible, visual, clear picture than with ArcGIS.

To measure this, I've collected the cultural data from the World Values Survey and transitional justice data from a number of different databases for my three test countries, Estonia, Rwanda, and Argentina. These countries are on three different continents, with different underlying causes for their conflict, different perpetrator ideologies, and different cultural backgrounds, in an attempt to provide as diverse a sample as possible. The cultural values of these three countries will then be compared to the goals of the  transitional justice mechanisms  utilized, in order to determine if there is any connection.

The World Values Survey includes data dating back to 1981 which takes ordinary citizens' answers to question on topics including Social Values, Norms, and Stereotypes; Happiness and Wellbeing; Social Capital, Trust and Organizational Membership; Perceptions of Corruption, Migration, Security Science and Technology; Economic, Religious and Ethical Values; Political Interest, Participation, Culture and Regimes; and Demographic and Socioeconomic variables. Researchers then take all of this information into consideration and plot out where a country sits on two axes - traditional versus secular-rational values, and survival versus self-expression values. The relationship of these two values is described as TRADRAT x SURVSELF, which is the acronyms of the two variable names. The World Values Survey website explains these values like this -

"Traditional values emphasize the importance of religion, parent-child ties, deference to authority and traditional family values. People who embrace these values also reject divorce, abortion, euthanasia and suicide. These societies have high levels of national pride and a nationalistic outlook. "Secular-rational values have the opposite preferences to the traditional values. These societies place less emphasis on religion, traditional family values and authority. Divorce, abortion, euthanasia and suicide are seen as relatively acceptable. (Suicide is not necessarily more common.) "Survival values place emphasis on economic and physical security. It is linked with a relatively ethnocentric outlook and low levels of trust and tolerance. "Self-expression values give high priority to environmental protection, growing tolerance of foreigners, gays and lesbians and gender equality, and rising demands for participation in decision-making in economic and political life."

The countries which have a place on this scatter-plot are then categorized into one of seven cluster groups - Confucian; Orthodox, Catholic, or Protestant Europe, West & South Asia; English-Speaking; African-Islamic; and Latin America. These groups are demonstrated on the scatter plot below.

For the most part, countries hold similar values to the others in their geographic location. However, there are some notable exceptions. For example, the English-Speaking countries are all over the world, and represent migration and colonization patterns rather than indigenity. Some countries also hold values which place them far away on the scatter plot from their geographic neighbors - including Chile, South Africa, India, Myanmar, Kazakhstan, and Estonia. Additionally, two countries which sit far away from each other on geographically but hold similar values can be identified on this map, like Peru, Rwanda, India, and Georgia, who are located on four different continents, but have TRADRAT x SURVSELF values that differ by fractions of a point. This is hard to envision by just looking at the scatter plot, but we can create maps in ArcGIS that demonstrate these relationships.

All three countries in this study utilized trials and truth commissions. Argentina utilized all five mechanisms. Estonia and Rwanda, however, provide some variation. In addition to the two universally utilized mechanisms, Rwanda, a country which values tradition, utilized amnesty. Estonia, a country which places a high value on survival, chose to utilize lustration.

Since all of the countries utilized trials and truth commissions, it may suggest that retribution and transparency are necessary elements of a transitional justice process. As for amnesty, lustration, and reparations, these may provide some insight into potential cultural influence. The World Values Survey explained that traditional cultures value authority and have a great deal of national pride. It would be unsurprising, therefore, to see a traditional culture like Rwanda choose amnesty and prioritize the stability of their country in a time of crisis. Survival focused cultures emphasize security and lack trust. This is consistent with a commitment to non-repetition and a refusal to allow perpetrators back into a position of power as demonstrated by lustration. While it may be a bit of a stretch to draw any conclusions from Argentina, it is the only country in this project which utilized reparations. Perhaps a society which prioritizes economic involvement from citizens and a move towards equality might feel that restitution is an effective way to achieve that.

The most obvious limitation for this project was the small sample size. There are far more than three countries which have utilized transitional justice mechanisms. Any correlations demonstrated by this research could be spurious or influenced by a confound variable we have not yet identified. These findings will not be impactful unless they can be replicated across a much larger sample size.

The second limitation for this project is the cultural variables utilized. Although the SURVSELF and TRADRAT variables provide extremely beneficial insight, the World Values Survey provides much more granular data which could be helpful in identifying the most salient cultural features that impact transitional justice processes. Although useful, the application of these types of variables would require expertise which is outside my expertise as a researcher, and time which a single semester of class could not provide.

Future studies should address the previously indicated limitations repeating this analysis on more countries, and by identifying and analyzing more of the cultural data provided by the World Values Survey. Additionally, controlling for the type of atrocity may provide important insight into why specific mechanisms were chosen. To build upon this study, longitudinal measures of whether an atrocity or conflict change the values of a country, and whether transitional justice mechanisms change the values of a country should be examined. And finally, studies on how effective transitional justice mechanisms prove for maintaining non-repetition, peace, and a liberal democracy should be measured against how well the goals of the applied mechanisms suit the values of the country being examined.

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