Hugo Van der Merwe, Victoria Baxter, Audrey R. Chapman. Assessing the Impact of Transitional Justice: Challenges for Empirical Research. Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace, 2008. 376 pp. $24.95 (paper), ISBN 978-1-60127-036-8.
Reviewed by Eric Wiebelhaus-Brahm (Senior Research Fellow, International Human Rights Law Institute, DePaul University)
Published on H-Human-Rights (January, 2010)
Commissioned by Rebecca K. Root (Ramapo College of New Jersey)
The Empirical Turn in the Study of Transitional Justice
In recent years, practitioners and scholars have become increasingly interested in evaluating transitional justice. For too long, transitional justice has been promoted on the basis of weak theoretical and empirical foundations.[1] One recent review found insufficient evidence to support strong transitional justice claims, whether positive or negative, and concluded that the claims are largely based on “faith” rather than “fact.”[2] As such, this volume is a welcome addition to the burgeoning literature that brings greater theoretical and methodological sophistication to gauging the effects of transitional justice. Neil Kritz’s contribution outlines several of the major policy questions that bedevil transitional justice architects and donors. Clearly, this volume cannot provide all of the answers. Yet, collectively, the authors explore a rich variety of approaches to the question of whether and how transitional justice produces the outcomes that many have long hoped and assumed that they did.
The chapters vary in their approach to exploring how one can assess the impact of transitional justice. Several chapters provide examples of empirical research projects and highlight methodological and conceptual issues. James Gibson provides an overview of his extensive research on public attitudes toward South Africa’s TRC. Jeffrey Sonis explores studies of survivors. Leigh Payne outlines a performative approach to study the perpetrators of human rights abuses and how their public statements about the past are interpreted by audiences. Brandon Hamber and Gráinne Kelly discuss their study of local-level understandings of reconciliation in Northern Ireland. In her chapter, Matilde González describes collecting oral histories of suffering and abuse in Guatemala. Finally, Victor Espinoza Cuevas and María Luisa Ortiz Rojas discuss their experiences conducting a five-country study of victims’ perceptions of truth commissions.
Several chapters address important conceptual and empirical challenges to evaluating transitional justice. A few chapters address the truth produced by truth commissions. Audrey Chapman’s and Janet Cherry’s respective chapters point out that the truth is shaped by factors inherent to a truth commission, such as its mandate and the resources at its disposal, as well as political constraints. Having worked on the South African TRC, Cherry chronicles how different views of truth within the commission muddled its message. With these limitations, the truth produced by truth commissions is invariably selective. Moreover, Cherry and González caution that truth commissions produce homogenized truths that paper over significant local and regional differences in human rights abuses. Both Chapman and Cherry emphasize that truth is open to interpretation and individuals often resist abandoning deeply held myths about the past. In terms of assessing the truth-finding properties of truth commissions, Chapman offers several potential measures and Cherry comments on the utility of a variety of research methods in the evaluation process.
Other chapters address additional key concepts. Hugo van der Merwe explores whether and how researchers can determine if a transitional justice mechanism has delivered justice. He criticizes transitional justice for its narrow focus on physical violence committed for political ends to the neglect of social injustice and criminal violence, a charge echoed by González. While noting a variety of forms of justice, e.g., retributive, restorative, procedural, substantive, and symbolic, Van der Merwe warns that transitional societies rarely have the capacity to deliver any of these on a large scale. He goes on to create a typology of justice goals. In essence, transitional justice seeks to change behavior and/or social norms and is directed at any or all of the groups of victims, perpetrators, and bystanders, However, these goals, he notes, may clash. Chapman contributes another chapter that considers how researchers can assess whether transitional justice mechanisms contribute to national reconciliation. In general, research on society-wide reconciliation makes the questionable assumption that dynamics working at the individual and small-group level also function on a larger scale. For her part, Chapman views national reconciliation as a long-term process that “requires the transformation of relationships among former antagonists ... [and] the establishment of a new type of relationship between the citizens and the government, resting on political institutions based on the rule of law and respect for human rights and thus facilitating cooperation across group boundaries, leading to a shared commitment to a common future” (p. 143). She outlines several variables that should be controlled for in isolating any effect caused by transitional justice. Perhaps the most significant challenge the authors note is that these concepts have diverse, culturally specific meanings and researchers must account for this.
The book’s chapters vary in the breadth of their focus. For example, readers of Payne’s Unsettling Accounts (2008) and Gibson’s Overcoming Apartheid (2004) will find much familiar here. Nonetheless, readers can glean many useful pieces of advice on conducting transitional justice research from these chapters. In his chapter, David Backer presents a wealth of data to support future cross-national research and useful methodological suggestions on how to conduct cross-national research. In addition, Sonis provides a detailed “how to” primer for constructing a study. He also devotes considerable attention to ethical considerations in conducting research on survivors (pp. 207-213). He rightly urges researchers to make survivors aware of resources that they can avail themselves of should they suffer trauma due to participating in a study. González also addresses ethics and research, saying that her “primary concern was to make the process of historical research a means of psychological and social reparations” (p. 304). She later suggests that, like mental health professionals, researchers should help interviewees find meaning in their experience (p. 308). Payne cautions researchers who work with perpetrators about the risks of developing personal connections with them. Interviewer and interviewee engage in mutual seduction to get the most out of the encounter. However, she argues that a performative approach can mitigate the risk of being drawn under the spell of perpetrators by forcing "researchers to find multiple interpretations and situate their own interpretations within that range" (p. 244). Cuevas and Rojas point to the importance and the challenge of having adequate knowledge of local circumstances and language skills to conduct cross-national research. Their highlighting of the importance of involving local partners to build local capacity and disseminate findings dovetails nicely with concerns regarding outside researchers’ limited expertise (pp. 322-323).
This theme of “giving back” to communities in which research is conducted is taken up by Victoria Baxter in her brief concluding chapter. She contends that the field needs to do a better job of producing research that is more readily accessible to the policy community, particularly local civil society groups in post-conflict countries. Furthermore, partnerships between developed and developing country researchers can help build local capacity and reduce the developed world bias in the transitional justice literature. This is but a sampling of the guidance researchers can draw from the collection. Some is sure to be controversial and will hopefully generate further methodological discussion.
The book ultimately advances the field less than it might have. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the South African TRC garners the most attention. More generally, truth commissions dominate many of the chapters. This is not to suggest that the methods and findings have no relevance for the study of other transitional justice tools, but readers most interested in trials, reparations, and the like may come away disappointed. Despite these limitations, the volume is an important addition to the transitional justice literature. I share the editors’ hopes expressed in the introduction that the book inspires researchers to provide better-quality empirically grounded guidance for policymakers, donors, and civil society. Although Baxter highlights the challenges of doing so in her chapter (pp. 325-326), Kritz sees potential in empirical research contributing to more informed policy choices by providing baseline data from which change can be measured. It is perhaps its potential to inspire researchers to answer difficult, yet vitally important, policy questions that is the volume’s greatest potential.
Notes
[1]. David Mendeloff, "Truth-Seeking, Truth-Telling and Post-Conflict Peacebuilding: Curb the Enthusiasm?" International Studies Review 6 (2004): 355-380.
[2]. Oskar N. T. Thoms, Roland Paris, and James Ron, The Effects of Transitional Justice Mechanisms: A Summary of Empirical Research Findings and Implications for Analysts and Practitioners (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Centre for International Policy Studies, 2008).
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Citation:
Eric Wiebelhaus-Brahm. Review of Van der Merwe, Hugo; Baxter, Victoria; Chapman, Audrey R., Assessing the Impact of Transitional Justice: Challenges for Empirical Research.
H-Human-Rights, H-Net Reviews.
January, 2010.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=25498
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