Collaborative Research: Legitimacy and Efficacy of Transitional Justice Institutions in Comparative Perspective

This study will assess how the design of transitional justice institutions in countries affected by conflict and/or authoritarianism affects public opinion, thereby shaping long-run national outcomes including regime type and conflict recurrence. Existing literature on the effects of transitional justice is inconclusive; such work is divided between micro-level, single-country studies and macro-level, cross-country studies as well as between studies of post-authoritarian and post-conflict contexts. By collecting comparable survey measures across countries that vary along several theoretically relevant dimensions and by building a cross-national dataset, this project will bridge these gaps. Further, the researchers will develop and test a novel theory about how public attitudes mediate the relationship between transitional justice institutions and long-run outcomes. Given the widespread use of transitional justice in post-conflict and post-authoritarian countries as well as democracies around the world, there is an urgent need for the field of transitional justice studies to develop a stronger base of evidence for policymaking. This project will shed light on which forms of transitional justice effectively promote peace, democracy, justice, and reconciliation as well as provide insights into how countries’ unique histories may shape the impact of transitional justice there. This project will investigate three questions. First, which kinds of transitional justice do people see as more legitimate? Second, how do people’s perceptions of the legitimacy of transitional justice institutions affect their broader political attitudes concerning the government, principles of democracy and autocracy, and out-groups? Third, do transitional justice institutions perceived as more legitimate contribute to stability following conflict? To address these questions, the research team will draw on their extensive thematic, regional, and methodological expertise to employ a mixed-methods research design which combines survey experiments, qualitative evidence collected from focus groups and elite interviews, and original cross-national data. This approach will leverage the strengths of diverse methodologies by combining (A) micro-level survey and qualitative data that will enable the investigators to assess the effects of varying transitional justice processes on individual attitudes with (B) macro-level cross-national data that will provide insight into the effects of institutions and historical context on national-level outcomes. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.