In a New York Times op-ed piece, University of Minnesota political scientist Kathryn Sikkink explains her research on the role that trials play in the transition process from authoritarian governments that systematically abuse human rights to democratic governments that do not:

Historical and statistical evidence gives us reason to question criticisms of human rights trials. My research shows that transitional countries — those moving from authoritarian governments to democracy or from civil war to peace — where human rights prosecutions have taken place subsequently become less repressive than transitional countries without prosecutions, holding other factors constant.

By comparing countries like Argentina and Chile that have used human rights prosecutions with those like Brazil that have not, I found that prosecutions tended not to exacerbate human rights violations, undermine democracy or lead to violence.

Of 100 countries that underwent a transition from 1980 to 2004 (the period for which extensive data is available), 48 pursued at least one human rights prosecution, and 33 of those pursued two or more. Countries that have prosecuted former officials exhibit lower levels of torture, summary execution, forced disappearances and political imprisonment. Although civil war heightens repression, prosecutions in the context of civil war do not make the situation worse, as critics claim.

Such evidence doesn’t tell us what will happen in any individual country, but it is a better basis from which to reason than a counterfactual guess. The possibility of punishment and disgrace makes violating human rights more costly, and thus deters future leaders from doing so.

Oxford’s Leigh Payne visited Nebraska last year and spoke to both the political science department and to the faculty of the human rights and humanitarian affairs program about some of her findings on this topic. While I wouldn’t say they necessarily contradict Sikkink’s work, they certainly add a layer of complexity. In particular, Payne’s research seems to point to the importance of employing multiple transitional justice mechanisms — rather than trials or truth commissions or amnesties alone — in order to achieve the democratic and human rights outcomes that Sikkink suggests might be gained from trials alone.

Here’s an hour-long audio clip of Payne discussing her findings, from a talk she gave at NYU.

HT: John Sides.