Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: What is the role of apology in the context of a process of accountability during a transition? Do apologies lead to reconciliation or sense of justice on the part of survivors of gross violations of human rights? The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission is the process most often cited to support the link among apologies, justice, and reconciliation. This paper will explore the linkages among these three concepts in a particular part of the South African process, that country?s amnesty process. Many of those who applied for amnesty apologized during their public hearings, often at the prompting of their attorneys. Sometimes amnesty committee members pressured applicants to apologize. Sometimes those apologies, and the other testimony of an applicant, lead a survivor to change from opposing to supporting amnesty for that individual. This paper will analyze the response of victims to apologies offered in the context of the South African amnesty process in order to ascertain whether apologies contributed to a sense of justice or reconciliation. It will be based on a thorough reading of the over 2000 days of hearings of the amnesty process, as well as interviews with applicants, survivors, attorneys, and committee members.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Despite the rise of accountability mechanisms throughout the world, amnesty continues to be used as a mechanism to settle accounts with past authoritarian state violence. This paper explores the continued use of amnesty even after the justice cascade. It draws on data from the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Transitional Justice Data Base. Our results suggest that while many countries have turned to a variety of accountability mechanisms (i.e., trials and truth commissions), just as many have continued to use amnesties to deal with past human rights abuses. Our findings suggest, therefore, that scholars may have exaggerated the fading appeal of amnesties as a way to resolve past violence. The paper concludes that countries do not choose between accountability or impunity, but often instead sequence their choices by adopting amnesties in the early years of the transition, followed by prosecutions and/or truth commissions. This research not only contributes to the understanding of the justice cascade, but also advances debates over “maximalist” and “minimalist” approaches and the “peace vs. justice” divide within the transitional justice literature.

Publication Type: Proceeding
Abstract: Too often the story of the origins of human rights is told either as a purely ideational or political story, which leads to assumptions about the conflict between “Western” perspectives and others. Instead, the right way to understand the rights articulated in human rights documents is to look at both the variety of ideas and the political choices that states had to make at the time of the documents’ conception. This paper examines the conflicted ideational roots of the Anglo-American position on human rights using the negotiations over the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) as the case study. I demonstrate that the politics of the Cold War encouraged the unification of the Anglo-American position. I then turn to a specific study of the British position on international human rights, explaining the combination of ideological and political battles that produced the UK’s articulation of which rights belonged in the UDHR. I show that even though Britain is a “liberal” state, debates within liberalism over the idea of individual freedom versus the role of the state led to differing conceptions of what rights ought to constitute “human rights.”

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Anti-corruption research has been dominated by functional issues, while the actual dynamics of transition towards clean government have been overlooked. This paper argues that: (i) measures which lead to clean government differ from measures which contribute to its maintenance, (ii) all of these measures are necessary but not sufficient for transformation from a “folklore of corruption” to clean government, and (iii) amnesty plays a crucial role in this transformation. We demonstrate these propositions in three steps: we assert that the distinction between function and genesis applies to anti-corruption strategies; we assess the social mechanisms by means of which amnesties realize their effects; and, thirdly, we utilize an historical process-tracing method to establish our findings. These propositions are critically examined in the particular circumstances surrounding two interlinked amnesty cases in Hong Kong’s successful transformation into one of the cleanest governments in Asia.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript