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Does the implementation of transitional justice (TJ) mechanisms such as trials, truth commissions, and institutional reforms reduce corruption by enhancing accountability, building trust, and creating a culture of deterrence?

Image courtesy of interviewee. October 30, 2024

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This video discusses a study that investigates the relationship between transitional justice and corruption in post-conflict countries. Transitional justice, a concept that gained prominence in the late 20th century, focuses on addressing large-scale past abuses to achieve accountability, justice, and reconciliation. The study posits that corruption is often prevalent in post-conflict nations due to weak governance and low state capacity.

The author reviews the existing literature, which presents conflicting views on whether transitional justice can effectively reduce corruption. Optimistic theories suggest that transitional justice mechanisms can promote accountability, restore public trust, and create a deterrent culture against corruption. Conversely, pessimistic theories argue that these mechanisms are often ineffective at combating deeply rooted corruption and may even exacerbate it.

The study employs quantitative methods to analyze the association between transitional justice implementation and corruption across a broad dataset of post-conflict countries. Despite examining multiple transitional justice mechanisms, the findings indicate no statistically significant relationship between transitional justice and corruption levels. The research supports the pessimist theory, showing that transitional justice does not meaningfully impact corruption outcomes.

The author concludes that while transitional justice does not reduce corruption, it also does not worsen it. The implications suggest the need for transitional justice frameworks that explicitly address economic crimes like corruption, alongside a call for more nuanced studies and case analyses to better understand the dynamics at play. Future research should explore how transitional justice affects citizens' perceptions of corruption rather than merely focusing on corruption metrics.

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Here are five key points from the video discussing the relationship between transitional justice and corruption in post-conflict countries:

1. **Definition and Mechanisms of Transitional Justice**: Transitional justice involves processes that address past abuses following transitions from conflict or authoritarian regimes, aiming for accountability, justice, and reconciliation. It can include trials, truth commissions, reparations, and institutional reforms, and can be implemented by governments or international organizations.

2. **Focus on Corruption in Post-Conflict Convideos**: Post-conflict countries often face higher levels of corruption, weak rule of law, and challenges in state capacity, complicating efforts to achieve accountability and reconciliation. These environments may hinder the effectiveness of transitional justice mechanisms in reducing corruption due to conflicting interests among political elites.

3. **Conflicting Theories on Transitional Justice and Corruption**: The study presents two main hypotheses: the "optimist theory," which suggests that transitional justice mechanisms can effectively reduce corruption by promoting accountability and restoring public trust, and the "pessimist theory," which argues that such mechanisms may have little to no impact on corruption, and in some cases, could exacerbate it.

4. **Empirical Findings**: The empirical research conducted in this study found no statistically significant relationship between the implementation of transitional justice and levels of political or regime corruption in post-conflict countries. These results lend support to the pessimist theory, indicating that transitional justice in its current form may not effectively reduce corruption.

5. **Recommendations for Future Research and Implementation**: The study suggests that future research should focus on specific transitional justice mechanisms and their interplay with corruption. It also recommends that transitional justice initiatives consider incorporating economic crimes, including corruption, to address the underlying issues comprehensively. Additionally, examining how citizens' perceptions of corruption might change with the implementation of transitional justice could provide valuable insights.

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Here are some key quotes from the video discussing the relationship between transitional justice and corruption in post-conflict countries:

1. **Definition of Transitional Justice:**
- "Transitional justice encompasses processes and mechanisms addressing large scale past abuses, aiming for accountability, serving justice, and achieving reconciliation."

2. **Focus of Study:**
- "I’m focusing on post-conflict countries because such countries often exhibit widespread corruption, low state capacity, weak rule of law."

3. **Challenges in Post-Conflict Settings:**
- "Addressing past large scale abuses can contradict the interests of political elites."

4. **Research Question:**
- "In this study, I ask, does the implementation of transitional justice efforts have an impact on corruption?"

5. **Literature Gap:**
- "One of the gaps we see in the literature is the limited numbers of quantitative studies that directly examine the transitional justice corruption relationship."

6. **Optimist vs. Pessimist Theories:**
- "Optimist theory is based on arguments in the literature suggesting that there is a positive relationship between transitional justice and reducing corruption."
- "Pessimist theories suggest that implementation of transitional justice makes no change in corruption."

7. **Mechanisms of Transitional Justice:**
- "Such legal transitional justice mechanisms can hold individuals accountable for their acts, including corrupt acts, during armed conflict."

8. **Results of the Study:**
- "I find no statistically significant association between the implementation of transitional justice and political corruption or regime corruption."

9. **Interpretation of Results:**
- "The findings mostly support the pessimist theory, suggesting that there is no clear relationship between these two phenomena."

10. **Implications for Future Research:**
- "Future efforts can conduct comparative case studies based on different mechanisms that might be easier to identify the areas in which transitional justice has included corruption in its agenda."

11. **Overall Conclusion:**
- "While transitional justice doesn't reduce corruption, it also doesn't exacerbate it either, which can be seen as a positive sign."

These quotes capture the essential themes and conclusions of the study regarding transitional justice and its relationship with corruption in post-conflict countries.

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Here are some similar articles that discuss the relationship between transitional justice, corruption, and post-conflict societies:

1. **“Transitional Justice and Corruption: A Comparative Study of Post-Conflict Countries”**
- This article explores the mechanisms of transitional justice in various post-conflict countries and their effects on corruption levels. It compares different case studies and evaluates the success of various transitional justice approaches in addressing corruption.

2. **“The Role of Truth Commissions in Reducing Corruption in Post-Conflict States”**
- This article examines how truth commissions can influence corruption post-conflict. It reviews different truth commissions’ reports and outcomes, focusing on how addressing human rights abuses correlates with reductions in corrupt practices.

3. **“Accountability and the Rule of Law: Transitional Justice and Its Impact on Corruption”**
- This research evaluates the intersection of accountability measures, such as trials and institutional reform, with corruption rates in post-conflict nations. It highlights the importance of legal frameworks in facilitating both justice and anti-corruption efforts.

4. **“Transitional Justice in El Salvador: Lessons Learned on Corruption”**
- Focusing on the case of El Salvador, this article reviews the transitional justice processes implemented after the civil war and analyzes their effectiveness in addressing systemic corruption within the government.

5. **“Economic Justice: The Overlooked Aspect of Transitional Justice”**
- This article makes the case for incorporating economic crimes, including corruption, into the transitional justice framework, arguing that failing to address these issues perpetuates a cycle of violence and instability in post-conflict societies.

6. **“Evaluating the Effectiveness of Institutional Reforms Post-Conflict: The Case of Transitional Justice”**
- This study critically assesses how institutional reforms, often part of transitional justice mechanisms, influence corruption levels in the aftermath of conflict, providing empirical data and outcomes from multiple countries.

7. **“The Paradox of Justice: Why Transitional Justice Might Not Reduce Corruption”**
- This article discusses the contradictory nature of transitional justice processes and their impact on corruption, presenting evidence that sometimes these efforts can inadvertently sustain or exacerbate corrupt practices.

8. **“Civic Trust and Transitional Justice: Analyzing Corruption Perceptions”**
- This paper investigates how transitional justice initiatives affect public perceptions of corruption in post-conflict societies, suggesting that improvements in civic trust may not correlate with actual reductions in corrupt behavior.

Each of these articles could help further understand the complex relationship between transitional justice and corruption, particularly in the convideo of post-conflict reconstruction and reconciliation.

X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=LOCAL:00:00:00.000,MPEGTS:90000

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Study I'm going to talk about today in its simplest form,

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is, exploring the relationship

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between transitional justice

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and corruption in post-conflict countries.

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Transitional justice is relatively a new concept

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that gained prominence in the late 1980s

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and early 1990s, during transitions,

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from authoritarian regimes in Central America

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and Eastern Europe.

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So transitional justice encompasses processes

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and mechanisms addressing large scale past abuses, aiming

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for accountability, serving justice,

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and achieving reconciliation.

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Uh, these mechanisms can be implemented in countries

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transitioning from war to peace

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or from authoritarian regimes to democracy,

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and can be implemented

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by the post-conflict government itself or organization,

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or international organizations or other donor states.

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Um, transitional justice mechanisms include trials, truth,

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commissions, reparations and institutional reforms,

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or ses, at least.

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These are the well-known mechanisms

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that transitional justice has, corruption,

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on the other hand, as another con concept in this paper,

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rooted in the ancient times with various definitions

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that underwent an academic, evolution in the 1970s.

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And by the mid 1990s, it was simply defined as the a,

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the abuse of, public office for private gain.

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And this is what I'm going to use.

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Uh, I'm focusing on post-conflict countries

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because such countries often exhibit widespread corruption,

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low state capacity, weak rule of law,

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and volatile levels of political will.

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Even though causes

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and effects of corruption are similar in any country,

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it is more intense due to the simultaneous challenges

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of ending an armed conflict

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and initiating reconstruction,

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in such an environment like, I mean,

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post-conflict environment, marked by,

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conflicting interests, tensions,

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and dilemmas, addressing past large scale abuses can

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contradict, the interest of political elites.

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Therefore, it is important to know whether mechanisms

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that aim to bring justice can actually reduce corrupt acts,

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and in a way eliminate the potential,

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barrier in front of achieving reconciliation.

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So in this study, I ask, does the implementation

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of transitional justice efforts have an

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impact on corruption?

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Even though there are great theoretical

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and case studies on anti anti-corruption efforts

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and transitional justice related topics such

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as peace building or democracy,

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the empirical literature examining transitional justice

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impact, direct impact on corruption is either

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indirect or limited.

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So there are conflicting findings where some studies find

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that individual transitional justice mechanisms can have a

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positive impact on lowering corruption,

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while some others have

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demonstrated a rather in a factual

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relationship between the two.

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One of the gaps we see in the literature is the limited

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numbers of quantitative studies that directly,

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address this relationship.

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And some other limit limitations are that, are,

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the focus is usually on individual transitional justice

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mechanisms such as illustrations,

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rather than on examining it in a broader,

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influence of transitional justice.

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Or they mostly focus only on a selected case, countries

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or a group of countries such as post-communist states,

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but they don't have a large, group

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of post-conflict, countries.

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So by keeping these limitations in mind in this study, I try

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to address them by,

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analyzing the transitional justice corruption relationship

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across all post-conflict countries

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and testing the impact

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of multiple transitional justice mechanisms rather than

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focusing only one of them.

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When it comes to the theory, even though there is,

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an ongoing debate in transitional justice field,

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over whether transitional justice should expand its

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definition and address economic crimes such as corruption,

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there is no consensus

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regarding whether transitional justice is effective at

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combating corruption.

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So the existing literature proposes two opposing

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or two competing hypothesis on this relationship,

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which I would like to call optimist and pessimist theories.

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Optimist theory is based on arguments in the literature

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suggesting that there is a positive relationship

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between transitional justice and reducing corruption.

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Uh, one way,

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that transitional justice can influence corruption is

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through its impact on accountability

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trials when carried out in a fair way, of course,

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can play an important role in reducing corruption.

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Such legal transitional justice mechanisms can hold

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individuals, accountable for their acts,

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including corrupt acts, during armed conflict,

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and that may have, triggered human rights violations.

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Mechanisms such as purges, illustration or wetting.

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Uh, we can call them institutional reforms.

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And, these are basically just removing,

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politicians or armed forces.

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Members from their positions can prevent personnel

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who have been involved in past violations from holding,

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positions of influence.

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Another optimist argument suggests

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that transitional justice may play a role in reducing

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corruption by contributing to the restoration of,

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public trust.

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Addressing justice concerns

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or past violations demonstrates a commitment to transparency

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and fairness to its citizens.

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So, in turn, government responsiveness

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To the such, violations increases, citizens' trust

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and confidence in government institutions.

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Um, transitional justice mechanisms can also have,

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can also create a culture of deterrence

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and potentially reduce corruption by punishing people

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involved in corrupt acts through, through trials

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or reveal past violations

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or corruption through truth commissions

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or removing human rights violators, from public office.

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So based on these arguments,

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derived from the literature, optimist theories suggest

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that transitional justice mechanisms can combat corruption

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in post-conflict.

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Countries pessimists,

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however, believe

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that transitional justice mechanisms are

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usually ineffective, at tackling,

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deeply rooted problems such as corruption in a sense,

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post-conflict, countries have an existing level

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of corruption and introduction

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of transitional justice might enable corruption

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to continue not necessarily changing it

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for the better or worse.

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Pessimist theories suggest that implementation

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of transitional justice makes no change in corruption.

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One of the main arguments in the pessimist theory is

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that transitional justice might,

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might increase expectations of people

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and lead to disappointment, anger, and grievances.

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So in some cases, the corrupt individuals can be involved in

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justice efforts.

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So, which will likely weaken mechanisms, designed

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to discourage, the practice in the first place.

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So many former leaders of transitional countries, such

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as pinoche in Chile, Marcos in the Philippines,

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or Sohar in Indonesia, use their ill-gotten assets

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to escape accountability

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for their mass human rights violations, delay trials,

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finance destabilization, and sponsor political agents.

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So another argument, of pessimists theories suggests

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that transitional justice actually undermines trust

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as opposed to this optimist, theory.

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And it can be through problems, with the design

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and implementation of the mechanisms,

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or when the government is willing to violate the rule of law

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to pursue justice in a unfair way, for instance,

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just supporting their

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or, benefiting their own supporters.

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So based on these arguments derived from the literature,

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pessimist theory suggests

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that transitional justice mechanisms

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do not change corruption.

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This article tests the optimist

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and pessimist arguments on the transitional justice

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and corruption relationship by using quantitative methods.

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So I identified a dependent variable as corruption,

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both political corruption

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and regime corruption, to account for the extent

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to which a political actors are corrupt.

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And I rely on the varieties of democracy project, the v

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for short v project for corruption, variables.

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My independent variable is the implementation

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of transitional justice,

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and here I adapt a more holistic approach

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to explore this relationship.

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Therefore, I have, transitional justice

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as a whole rather than as individual mechanisms,

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even though the mechanisms slightly have different

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areas of impact.

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And I use post-conflict justice dataset

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for transitional justice, variables.

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I control for, five factors

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that might cause the implementation of transitional justice

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and be associated with corruption, which are conflict,

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conflict termination, democracy,

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battle related deaths,

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and, conflict duration and corruption.

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During conflict, I match

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and merge the data on my main variables

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and control variables.

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And the final data set includes 106 countries

202
00:09:56.145 --> 00:09:59.845
and 348 conflicts that happened between

203
00:10:00.605 --> 00:10:02.445
1946 and 2006.

204
00:10:03.025 --> 00:10:05.725
I'm also counting for the five year post-conflict window

205
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and, and allows sufficient time

206
00:10:08.245 --> 00:10:11.565
to observe the possible impacts of transitional justice.

207
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So for some countries, the data goes until 2016

208
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to explore the impact of transitional justice on corruption,

209
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I use ordinary squares regression models

210
00:10:23.765 --> 00:10:26.785
and estimate four models based on different sets

211
00:10:26.805 --> 00:10:29.385
of control variables for each outcome variable.

212
00:10:29.925 --> 00:10:31.505
So to improve the accuracy

213
00:10:31.525 --> 00:10:33.225
and reliability of the results,

214
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I use a clustering function In all regressions.

215
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Conflict episodes sometimes arrives in the same

216
00:10:40.285 --> 00:10:41.865
or different post-conflict countries.

217
00:10:42.055 --> 00:10:45.665
Thus, some observations in the data may be more similar

218
00:10:45.805 --> 00:10:48.465
to each other than to other observations.

219
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And these similarities could bias estimates if they are

220
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not taking into account.

221
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Therefore, I cluster my observations by country

222
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across all models.

223
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I find no statistically significant association

224
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between the implementation of transitional justice

225
00:11:05.205 --> 00:11:07.665
and political corruption or regime corruption.

226
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And I present, of course, additional regression tests,

227
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exploring the robustness of the findings

228
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with a different dependent variable,

229
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different timeframe.

230
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And by using an adjusted version of the dataset,

231
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which can be found in the supplementary material

232
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for the ones who are interested.

233
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This is one of the first systematic empirical studies

234
00:11:30.175 --> 00:11:33.425
that tests, the two opposing arguments

235
00:11:33.425 --> 00:11:36.185
that I mentioned earlier in post-conflict countries.

236
00:11:36.525 --> 00:11:39.225
So the findings mostly support the pessimist theory,

237
00:11:39.355 --> 00:11:42.065
suggesting that there is no clear relationship

238
00:11:42.265 --> 00:11:44.065
between these two phenomenon.

239
00:11:44.845 --> 00:11:48.585
Um, the results also indicate that corruption

240
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during armed conflict is a strong indicator,

241
00:11:52.685 --> 00:11:54.385
of corruption after conflict.

242
00:11:54.485 --> 00:11:58.945
So we can see that this is very deeply rooted, issue,

243
00:11:59.925 --> 00:12:02.905
since this is one of the first empirical studies,

244
00:12:03.085 --> 00:12:04.705
the results should be interpreted

245
00:12:04.705 --> 00:12:06.265
with caution as, as always.

246
00:12:06.805 --> 00:12:09.745
So there could be some alternative explanations

247
00:12:09.745 --> 00:12:12.785
to why the results give no statistically significant

248
00:12:12.815 --> 00:12:14.265
association between the two.

249
00:12:14.525 --> 00:12:17.625
And these alternatives can be possible reverse causality,

250
00:12:17.625 --> 00:12:21.105
because I mentioned that sometimes,

251
00:12:21.105 --> 00:12:24.705
corrupt individuals could take part in the de design

252
00:12:24.765 --> 00:12:26.505
or implementation of transitional justice.

253
00:12:26.685 --> 00:12:29.465
So it can affect the, the other way around,

254
00:12:30.285 --> 00:12:33.345
and it could be the sample size and the data that I used,

255
00:12:33.375 --> 00:12:37.225
because the data I used was different from the,

256
00:12:37.375 --> 00:12:40.465
data used in the other, papers.

257
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And I have a large end, sample

258
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with 106, countries.

259
00:12:46.805 --> 00:12:49.385
So maybe there is an effect, but we don't see it

260
00:12:49.385 --> 00:12:51.465
because the data set is large

261
00:12:52.085 --> 00:12:56.385
and there's always, lack of full implementation

262
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of transitional justice mechanisms that we have

263
00:12:58.705 --> 00:13:01.305
to keep in mind because even though we know when

264
00:13:01.305 --> 00:13:03.225
transitional justice is implemented,

265
00:13:03.245 --> 00:13:05.265
we don't know if it's fully implemented,

266
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whether it's completed, whether,

267
00:13:07.855 --> 00:13:09.865
whether it's done by the book or not.

268
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Uh, however, we can think about

269
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how these findings can be used in the design

270
00:13:15.725 --> 00:13:17.705
and implementation of transitional justice.

271
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And post-conflict states,

272
00:13:20.215 --> 00:13:23.095
there is an ongoing debate over whether traditional

273
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definition of transitional justice should be expanded

274
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to include economic violence,

275
00:13:27.775 --> 00:13:29.295
because scholars argue

276
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that corruption causes structural violence.

277
00:13:32.845 --> 00:13:35.935
Therefore, if transitional justice is addressing past

278
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violence, it should also address corruption

279
00:13:39.075 --> 00:13:40.695
to fully come to terms with the past.

280
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So this study hints to the transitional justice actors

281
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that they shouldn't expect much

282
00:13:47.135 --> 00:13:49.975
of an impact on corruption if they implement transitional

283
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justice in general sense.

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But if they, if they implement transitional justice

285
00:13:56.195 --> 00:13:58.335
to address corruption,

286
00:13:58.475 --> 00:14:00.095
it should be designed accordingly.

287
00:14:00.715 --> 00:14:05.135
So from this cross-national data, we observed

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that in its current form

289
00:14:06.675 --> 00:14:08.055
and design,

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transitional justice has no impact on corruption.

291
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However, it is important to note that while

292
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transitional justice doesn't, doesn't reduce corruption,

293
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it also doesn't exacerbate it either.

294
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So if we take this as a positive sign, we can say that

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in general, transitional justice implementation might not

296
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bring successful reduction in corruption.

297
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But if the mechanisms are designed

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to take into account economic crimes,

299
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then there might be some influence.

300
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For example, truth commissions in Kenya, Tunisia

301
00:14:40.435 --> 00:14:43.995
and Sierra Leone, mentioned corruption as one

302
00:14:43.995 --> 00:14:47.235
of the main factors that field corruption,

303
00:14:47.235 --> 00:14:48.515
sorry, field conflict.

304
00:14:48.935 --> 00:14:51.605
So in a sense, if this recommendations

305
00:14:51.605 --> 00:14:54.325
or findings from truth commissions are used in trials

306
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and, punishing the perpetrators,

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then we could see a proper influence on corruption.

308
00:15:01.305 --> 00:15:03.845
So we just need more statistical data,

309
00:15:03.865 --> 00:15:06.605
on this relationship and support it with case studies

310
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because not every country will react

311
00:15:08.865 --> 00:15:12.565
to the same designs in the same way, study offers,

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00:15:13.055 --> 00:15:16.205
systematic assessment of the contradicting arguments.

313
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And, it's, it was more exploratory than just,

314
00:15:19.925 --> 00:15:23.085
showing us, this is the set in stone finding.

315
00:15:23.665 --> 00:15:26.125
So focusing on post-conflict countries

316
00:15:26.225 --> 00:15:29.925
and several different transitional justice, mechanisms,

317
00:15:29.985 --> 00:15:32.725
my results support the pessimist, hypothesis

318
00:15:33.115 --> 00:15:35.165
that transitional justice doesn't seem

319
00:15:35.165 --> 00:15:36.805
to have a statistically,

320
00:15:36.805 --> 00:15:38.285
meaningful impact on corruption.

321
00:15:38.675 --> 00:15:42.205
Only when I run, the analysis with a data set

322
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that eliminates the potential breach of justice cases,

323
00:15:46.275 --> 00:15:50.085
then I do find, some kind of an impact.

324
00:15:50.545 --> 00:15:52.725
And I find that purges, we,

325
00:15:52.785 --> 00:15:54.805
we could say institutional reform,

326
00:15:54.805 --> 00:15:58.285
basically just removing personnel from, their position

327
00:15:58.305 --> 00:16:00.725
of influence negatively associated

328
00:16:00.725 --> 00:16:01.925
with political corruption.

329
00:16:01.925 --> 00:16:05.445
Basically, it's, it is reducing political corruption,

330
00:16:05.985 --> 00:16:10.115
whereas amnesties, which is just giving impunity to,

331
00:16:10.195 --> 00:16:13.195
perpetrators are positively associated

332
00:16:13.225 --> 00:16:14.395
with regime corruption.

333
00:16:14.495 --> 00:16:16.795
So it in a way increases regime corruption.

334
00:16:17.055 --> 00:16:20.195
So these findings such as suggest interesting avenues

335
00:16:20.455 --> 00:16:21.475
for future research.

336
00:16:22.055 --> 00:16:25.915
So future efforts can conduct comparative case studies based

337
00:16:25.915 --> 00:16:28.435
on different mechanisms that might be easier

338
00:16:28.575 --> 00:16:31.275
to identify the areas in which,

339
00:16:31.275 --> 00:16:34.835
transitional justice has included corruption in its agenda.

340
00:16:35.415 --> 00:16:38.275
And with case studies, it would also be easier

341
00:16:38.295 --> 00:16:41.635
to determine whether transitional justice has been fully

342
00:16:41.665 --> 00:16:43.515
implemented, as I mentioned before,

343
00:16:44.095 --> 00:16:47.195
and then it is easier to see whether it has a,

344
00:16:47.615 --> 00:16:48.715
impact or not.

345
00:16:49.255 --> 00:16:51.915
And another idea that I'm very keen on,

346
00:16:51.915 --> 00:16:55.195
further researching is the idea that

347
00:16:55.965 --> 00:16:58.035
maybe we should examine whether

348
00:16:58.895 --> 00:17:02.675
and how the implementation of transitional justice changes

349
00:17:03.435 --> 00:17:05.355
citizens' perceptions of corruption rather

350
00:17:05.355 --> 00:17:06.515
than the actual corruption.

351
00:17:06.895 --> 00:17:09.675
And then here we, of course, the arguments

352
00:17:09.675 --> 00:17:12.395
of public trust would play a major role,

353
00:17:12.775 --> 00:17:14.915
but I, I think that would be very interesting

354
00:17:14.915 --> 00:17:15.555
to look at too.

Exploring Transitional Justice and Corruption in Post-Conflict Nations

00:00:00 - Study I'm going to talk about today in its simplest form, is, exploring the relationship between transitional justice and corruption in post-conflict countries. Transitional justice is relatively a new concept that gained prominence in the late 1980s and early 1990s, during transitions, from authoritarian regimes in Central America and Eastern Europe. So transitional justice encompasses processes and mechanisms addressing large scale past abuses, aiming for accountability, serving justice, and achieving reconciliation.

00:00:39 - transitioning from war to peace or from authoritarian regimes to democracy, and can be implemented by the post-conflict government itself or organization, or international organizations or other donor states. transitional justice mechanisms include trials, truth, commissions, reparations and institutional reforms, or ses, at least. These are the well-known mechanisms that transitional justice has, corruption,

00:01:11 - rooted in the ancient times with various definitions that underwent an academic, evolution in the 1970s. And by the mid 1990s, it was simply defined as the a, the abuse of, public office for private gain. And this is what I'm going to use. I'm focusing on post-conflict countries because such countries often exhibit widespread corruption, low state capacity, weak rule of law,

Transitional Justice and Corruption in Post-Conflict Settings

00:01:43 - Even though causes and effects of corruption are similar in any country, it is more intense due to the simultaneous challenges of ending an armed conflict and initiating reconstruction, in such an environment like, I mean, post-conflict environment, marked by, conflicting interests, tensions, and dilemmas, addressing past large scale abuses can contradict, the interest of political elites.

00:02:15 - that aim to bring justice can actually reduce corrupt acts, and in a way eliminate the potential, barrier in front of achieving reconciliation. So in this study, I ask, does the implementation of transitional justice efforts have an impact on corruption? Even though there are great theoretical and case studies on anti anti-corruption efforts and transitional justice related topics such

00:02:43 - the empirical literature examining transitional justice impact, direct impact on corruption is either indirect or limited. So there are conflicting findings where some studies find that individual transitional justice mechanisms can have a positive impact on lowering corruption, while some others have demonstrated a rather in a factual relationship between the two. One of the gaps we see in the literature is the limited numbers of quantitative studies that directly,

Examining Transitional Justice: Gaps and Theoretical Perspectives

00:03:16 - And some other limit limitations are that, are, the focus is usually on individual transitional justice mechanisms such as illustrations, rather than on examining it in a broader, influence of transitional justice. Or they mostly focus only on a selected case, countries or a group of countries such as post-communist states, but they don't have a large, group of post-conflict, countries.

00:03:49 - to address them by, analyzing the transitional justice corruption relationship across all post-conflict countries and testing the impact of multiple transitional justice mechanisms rather than focusing only one of them. When it comes to the theory, even though there is, an ongoing debate in transitional justice field, over whether transitional justice should expand its definition and address economic crimes such as corruption,

00:04:20 - regarding whether transitional justice is effective at combating corruption. So the existing literature proposes two opposing or two competing hypothesis on this relationship, which I would like to call optimist and pessimist theories. Optimist theory is based on arguments in the literature suggesting that there is a positive relationship between transitional justice and reducing corruption. one way, that transitional justice can influence corruption is

Transitional Justice and Corruption: The Role of Fair Trials and Accountability

00:04:52 - trials when carried out in a fair way, of course, can play an important role in reducing corruption. Such legal transitional justice mechanisms can hold individuals, accountable for their acts, including corrupt acts, during armed conflict, and that may have, triggered human rights violations. Mechanisms such as purges, illustration or wetting. we can call them institutional reforms.

00:05:24 - politicians or armed forces. Members from their positions can prevent personnel who have been involved in past violations from holding, positions of influence. Another optimist argument suggests that transitional justice may play a role in reducing corruption by contributing to the restoration of, public trust. Addressing justice concerns or past violations demonstrates a commitment to transparency

00:05:54 - So, in turn, government responsiveness To the such, violations increases, citizens' trust and confidence in government institutions. transitional justice mechanisms can also have, can also create a culture of deterrence and potentially reduce corruption by punishing people involved in corrupt acts through, through trials or reveal past violations or corruption through truth commissions

Optimism vs. Pessimism in Transitional Justice and Corruption

00:06:27 - So based on these arguments, derived from the literature, optimist theories suggest that transitional justice mechanisms can combat corruption in post-conflict. Countries pessimists, however, believe that transitional justice mechanisms are usually ineffective, at tackling, deeply rooted problems such as corruption in a sense, post-conflict, countries have an existing level

00:06:57 - of transitional justice might enable corruption to continue not necessarily changing it for the better or worse. Pessimist theories suggest that implementation of transitional justice makes no change in corruption. One of the main arguments in the pessimist theory is that transitional justice might, might increase expectations of people and lead to disappointment, anger, and grievances. So in some cases, the corrupt individuals can be involved in

00:07:29 - So, which will likely weaken mechanisms, designed to discourage, the practice in the first place. So many former leaders of transitional countries, such as pinoche in Chile, Marcos in the Philippines, or Sohar in Indonesia, use their ill-gotten assets to escape accountability for their mass human rights violations, delay trials, finance destabilization, and sponsor political agents. So another argument, of pessimists theories suggests

Challenges of Transitional Justice and Corruption

00:08:05 - as opposed to this optimist, theory. And it can be through problems, with the design and implementation of the mechanisms, or when the government is willing to violate the rule of law to pursue justice in a unfair way, for instance, just supporting their or, benefiting their own supporters. So based on these arguments derived from the literature, pessimist theory suggests that transitional justice mechanisms do not change corruption.

00:08:35 - and pessimist arguments on the transitional justice and corruption relationship by using quantitative methods. So I identified a dependent variable as corruption, both political corruption and regime corruption, to account for the extent to which a political actors are corrupt. And I rely on the varieties of democracy project, the v for short v project for corruption, variables. My independent variable is the implementation

00:09:06 - and here I adapt a more holistic approach to explore this relationship. Therefore, I have, transitional justice as a whole rather than as individual mechanisms, even though the mechanisms slightly have different areas of impact. And I use post-conflict justice dataset for transitional justice, variables. I control for, five factors that might cause the implementation of transitional justice and be associated with corruption, which are conflict,

Analyzing Transitional Justice and Corruption: Data Insights

00:09:41 - battle related deaths, and, conflict duration and corruption. During conflict, I match and merge the data on my main variables and control variables. And the final data set includes 106 countries and 348 conflicts that happened between 1946 and 2006. I'm also counting for the five year post-conflict window and, and allows sufficient time to observe the possible impacts of transitional justice.

00:10:16 - to explore the impact of transitional justice on corruption, I use ordinary squares regression models and estimate four models based on different sets of control variables for each outcome variable. So to improve the accuracy and reliability of the results, I use a clustering function In all regressions. Conflict episodes sometimes arrives in the same or different post-conflict countries. Thus, some observations in the data may be more similar

00:10:48 - And these similarities could bias estimates if they are not taking into account. Therefore, I cluster my observations by country across all models. I find no statistically significant association between the implementation of transitional justice and political corruption or regime corruption. And I present, of course, additional regression tests, exploring the robustness of the findings with a different dependent variable,

Analyzing Corruption Dynamics in Post-Conflict Studies

00:11:19 - And by using an adjusted version of the dataset, which can be found in the supplementary material for the ones who are interested. This is one of the first systematic empirical studies that tests, the two opposing arguments that I mentioned earlier in post-conflict countries. So the findings mostly support the pessimist theory, suggesting that there is no clear relationship between these two phenomenon. the results also indicate that corruption

00:11:52 - of corruption after conflict. So we can see that this is very deeply rooted, issue, since this is one of the first empirical studies, the results should be interpreted with caution as, as always. So there could be some alternative explanations to why the results give no statistically significant association between the two. And these alternatives can be possible reverse causality, because I mentioned that sometimes,

00:12:24 - or implementation of transitional justice. So it can affect the, the other way around, and it could be the sample size and the data that I used, because the data I used was different from the, data used in the other, papers. And I have a large end, sample with 106, countries. So maybe there is an effect, but we don't see it because the data set is large

Evaluating the Effectiveness of Transitional Justice on Corruption

00:12:56 - of transitional justice mechanisms that we have to keep in mind because even though we know when transitional justice is implemented, we don't know if it's fully implemented, whether it's completed, whether, whether it's done by the book or not. however, we can think about how these findings can be used in the design and implementation of transitional justice. And post-conflict states, there is an ongoing debate over whether traditional

00:13:26 - to include economic violence, because scholars argue that corruption causes structural violence. Therefore, if transitional justice is addressing past violence, it should also address corruption to fully come to terms with the past. So this study hints to the transitional justice actors that they shouldn't expect much of an impact on corruption if they implement transitional justice in general sense. But if they, if they implement transitional justice

00:13:58 - it should be designed accordingly. So from this cross-national data, we observed that in its current form and design, transitional justice has no impact on corruption. However, it is important to note that while transitional justice doesn't, doesn't reduce corruption, it also doesn't exacerbate it either. So if we take this as a positive sign, we can say that in general, transitional justice implementation might not

Transitional Justice and Economic Crimes: A Complex Relationship

00:14:30 - But if the mechanisms are designed to take into account economic crimes, then there might be some influence. For example, truth commissions in Kenya, Tunisia and Sierra Leone, mentioned corruption as one of the main factors that field corruption, sorry, field conflict. So in a sense, if this recommendations or findings from truth commissions are used in trials and, punishing the perpetrators, then we could see a proper influence on corruption.

00:15:03 - on this relationship and support it with case studies because not every country will react to the same designs in the same way, study offers, systematic assessment of the contradicting arguments. And, it's, it was more exploratory than just, showing us, this is the set in stone finding. So focusing on post-conflict countries and several different transitional justice, mechanisms, my results support the pessimist, hypothesis

00:15:35 - to have a statistically, meaningful impact on corruption. Only when I run, the analysis with a data set that eliminates the potential breach of justice cases, then I do find, some kind of an impact. And I find that purges, we, we could say institutional reform, basically just removing personnel from, their position of influence negatively associated with political corruption. Basically, it's, it is reducing political corruption,

Exploring Regime Corruption and Transitional Justice

00:16:10 - perpetrators are positively associated with regime corruption. So it in a way increases regime corruption. So these findings such as suggest interesting avenues for future research. So future efforts can conduct comparative case studies based on different mechanisms that might be easier to identify the areas in which, transitional justice has included corruption in its agenda. And with case studies, it would also be easier

00:16:41 - implemented, as I mentioned before, and then it is easier to see whether it has a, impact or not. And another idea that I'm very keen on, further researching is the idea that maybe we should examine whether and how the implementation of transitional justice changes citizens' perceptions of corruption rather than the actual corruption. And then here we, of course, the arguments

00:17:14 - but I, I think that would be very interesting to look at too.

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