Escaping Justice: Impunity for State Crimes in Age of Accountability

Dr. Cyanne Loyle is the Political Science Board of Visitors Early Career Professor and a Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at Pennsylvania State University. She also serves as Director of the Penn State and College of the Liberal Arts Faculty Writing Program. In addition to her work at Penn State, Dr. Loyle is a Research Professor and Global Fellow with the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO). Her research, teaching, and public scholarship focus on political violence, transitional justice, and the dynamics of conflict and peacebuilding. Learn more at www.cyanneloyle.com.

Now more than ever the international community plays a central role in pressing governments to hold their own to account. Despite pressure to adhere to global human rights norms, governments continue to benefit from impunity for their past crimes. In an age of accountability, states continue to escape justice. How does this outcome persist?  In this book I present a theory of strategic adaptation which explains the conditions under which governments adopt transitional justice without a genuine commitment to holding state forces to account. Through in-depth fieldwork in Rwanda, Uganda, and Northern Ireland, I demonstrate three unique strategies of adaption: coercion, containment, and concession and traces the conditions under which a government pursues its chosen strategies and the resulting transitional justice outcomes.

This talk is based on a new book, available here Open Access: https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/escaping-justice/2D0F04118946125E435581C55C7854D1.