Post-Conflict Justice and Sustainable Peace
No systematic study has examined the effect of post-conflict justice on the duration of peace on a global basis. This paper attempts to fill that void by building on a newly constructed dataset (Binningsbo, Elster, and Gates 2005), which reports th...
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Policy Research Working Paper |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2012
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2007/04/7523811/post-conflict-justice-sustainable-peace http://hdl.handle.net/10986/7007 |
| Summary: | No systematic study has examined the
effect of post-conflict justice on the duration of peace on
a global basis. This paper attempts to fill that void by
building on a newly constructed dataset (Binningsbo, Elster,
and Gates 2005), which reports the presence of various forms
of post-conflict justice efforts (trials, purges, reparation
to victims, and truth commissions) as well as processes
associated with abstaining from post-conflict justice
(amnesty and exile). It investigates the long-term effects
of post-conflict justice on the duration of peace after
conflict. It uses a Cox proportional hazard model to analyze
the influence of the various types of post-conflict justice
on the length of the peace period before the recurrence of
violent conflict. Post-conflict trials as well as other
types of justice do lead to a more durable peace in
democratic as well as non-democratic societies, but the
results are weak and are therefore difficult to generalize.
Forms of non-retributive justice (that is, reparations to
victims and truth commissions), however, are strongly
associated with the duration of peace in democratic
societies, but are not significant for non-democratic
societies. Amnesty tends to be destabilizing and generally
associated with shorter peace duration, but exile tends to
lead to a more durable peace. |
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