Can truth and justice actually prevent homicide epidemics in new democracies? According to a new comparative study of 76 countries that transitioned from authoritarian rule to democracy as part of the Third Wave of democratization, the answer is a resounding yes.
In their new book, Accountability Shock: Why Transitional Justice Prevents Criminal Wars in New Democracies, three scholars affiliated with the Kellogg Institute at the University of Notre Dame offer a deep and data-driven look at how transitional justice mechanisms can help to prevent post-authoritarian violence in newly emerging democracies.
The book combines global statistical evidence with three comparative case studies from Latin America: Mexico and Peru, Brazil and Argentina, and El Salvador and Guatemala. In each pair, the authors contrast a country that failed to address its repressive history and later suffered from high criminal violence (such as Brazil) with another that implemented robust transitional justice and developed more peacefully (such as Argentina).
The Shock of Truth and Justice
Co-author Guillermo Trejo, a professor of political science, director of the Notre Dame Violence and Transitional Justice Lab (V-TJLab), and a Kellogg Institute faculty fellow since 2012, explains that the book title – and the idea of the “accountability shock” – crystallized during a long interview with Judge Yassmin Barrios. Building on the findings of two truth commissions, in a landmark 2013 trial, Barrios found former Guatemalan president General Efraín Ríos Montt guilty of genocide and crimes against humanity, sending shock waves through Guatemala’s system.
Specialists in Violence and the Gray Zone
Under authoritarian rule, military and police "specialists in violence" often control a "gray zone" where the state and criminal underworld intersect. These actors typically oversee illegal markets, such as drug trafficking, in exchange for their loyalty to the regime. However, if a country transitions to democracy without a formal reckoning with its past, these individuals continue to shape the landscape of national violence. They often repurpose the brutal counterinsurgency techniques once used against political dissidents to fight modern street gangs and drug cartels. This continuity has allowed the "iron-fist" policies of the Cold War to transform into the criminal wars seen today in Mexico, Brazil, and El Salvador. Ultimately, many of these specialists defect to the criminal world entirely, using their state-honed expertise to run illicit markets or serve as elite mercenaries for drug cartels.
Global Evidence for Accountability
By contrast, truth commissions and meaningful criminal trials send a powerful signal that human rights abuses will no longer be tolerated in democracy. This “accountability shock” removes authoritarian specialists in violence who committed atrocities in the past from positions of influence and deters others from criminal action or unlawful methods to fight crime.
Through quantitative analysis, the authors found that robust truth commissions are the single most effective deterrent against homicide epidemics. Their impact is maximized only when prosecutors use truth reports to investigate the entire chain of command and sentence high-ranking intellectual authors of atrocities. While these measures to curb violence are powerful, the authors find the effect expires after ten years unless the shock is institutionalized through major reforms of the security and judicial sectors and additional transitional justice measures are adopted, including reparations programs for victims and policies of human rights education and memorialization.
Comparative Lessons and National Infrastructure
The case studies constitute the empirical centerpiece of the book. “The beauty of the case studies is that they do different things, and you need them all to demonstrate the complexity of the subject,” said the book’s co-author Lucía Tiscornia, a former Kellogg Institute PhD Fellow, now an associate professor in the School of Politics and International Relations at University College Dublin who specializes in the causes and consequences of political and criminal violence. Drawing on dozens of truth commission reports, human rights investigations, in-depth interviews with prosecutors and human rights defenders, and a decade engagement with transitional justice practitioners and victims’ organizations, the book traces the historical link between how countries dismantle counterinsurgent states and their subsequent levels of peace or violence. It shows how incomplete or absent reforms are associated with the persistence of violent state practices and the rise of large-scale criminal violence.
“The core of the book explores the long-term legacies of breaking state impunity for peace and violence,” said the third co-author Juan Albarracín, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) and a former Kellogg Institute PhD fellow, with expertise in criminal and political violence and criminal governance in democracies. Albarracín notes that the adoption of a robust transitional justice process serves as the “fork that split Argentina’s and Brazil’s post-authoritarian road” toward relative peace or large-scale criminal violence.
Sustaining the Vaccine Against Violence
The authors see the accountability shock as a vaccine with two powerful ingredients – truth and justice. “By breaking state impunity and removing the counterinsurgent state, this vaccine prevents the outbreak of large-scale violence and criminal wars in democracies,” said Trejo, noting the success of Argentina’s evolution despite its challenges.
However, he cautions that as with any vaccine, continued care is needed. “The key is you need boosters, you need to continue with victim-centered truth-seeking processes and criminal trials,” he said. Trejo adds that the long-term development of peaceful democracies also require “changes in lifestyle,” highlighting the critical role of institutional reforms to prevent repetition and the adoption of restorative justice mechanisms, including human rights education in schools and public institutions, memory policies, efforts toward material and symbolic reparations for victims, and an ongoing commitment to develop a human rights and peace culture.
Accountability Shock: Why Transitional Justice Prevents Criminal Wars in New Democracies is available through Cambridge University Press and retail booksellers.
The Kellogg Institute, part of the Keough School of Global Affairs at the University of Notre Dame, is a leading center for interdisciplinary research dedicated to understanding, strengthening, and renewing democracy worldwide.