Podcast: Accountability Shock: Why Transitional Justice Prevents Criminal Wars in New Democracies

This podcast [music] is brought to you by the IEA, sharing ideas, shaping policy. >> Good late afternoon everybody. Good early evening. My name is Barry Culur and I'm the director of research here at the IIA. A very warm welcome to those who are joining us here in full technolar in central Dublin and indeed welcome to those online uh for this event on accountability shock. why trans transitional justice prevents criminal wars in new democracies. And I'm really pleased that those of you who signed up, you knew you were going to hear from one of the books authors, Lucia Tuscornia, and also Roger McGinty from the University of Durham. But we have a very special treat that one of the other books, one of the book's other authors, Juan Albaras, is also with us. So Juan is going to participate in the Q&A afterwards. But it's a a real a real treat and honor to host you. Congratulations on your book. Uh the event is going to follow a standard enough predictable format. So we're going to hear from from Lucia for about 20 minutes. We're going to invite Roger McGinty then to uh to respond for for 10 minutes or so. It'll be my responsibility to try and keep you to time. The convention here is we start turning the lights on and off if you go on for too long. Right. But but but just to say I I had the great pleasure of spending some some time with your book. But congratulations. It's a it's a huge achievement. I'm very pleased that so as someone really interested in in politics, democracy, but as a non-expert, some of the questions I had uh are at the center of your book, whereas it would seem some of the third wave democracies in Central and South America, how they developed differences, some had kind of periods of protracted violence whilst others didn't. And I've often wondered and your book goes a long way for the likes of me to try and understand that that part of the part of your contention is that transitional justice can play a role. The cases are great and cover a really wide area. El Salvad Salvador, Guatemala, Brazil, Argentina, Peru, and Mexico. Um, and it's really it's great to see such a a dense yet accessible book that is based on such uh mixed methods. And what I was saying to you, Lucia, just before I give you the the podium, I went back to the the preface and it was it's really interesting to obviously hear a bit about your your own experiences, where you studied, where you met and whatnot, but the amount of people who warranted uh reference in your preface. So, conferences of a decade ago, scholars, teachers, students, people that you met over the course of the of the case studies, it takes a village to write a book, right? So obviously it really felt that there was thousands of voices and thousands of conversations that came across from my quick reading of your book. So it was a real pleasure. It's our our honor to host you. So if you'd like to get to the podium, thank you very much. >> Thank you. That was unexpected. Um thank you Barry for the for the kind introduction and hello everyone. uh and thank you for being here today. I would like to begin by thanking the Institute for International and European Affairs and his director of research uh Dr. Barry Culfur for accepting my proposal to present the book here. Thank you also to Keen Fitzgerald uh and Loren Marie and everybody else uh at the IIEA for all the work they put behind the logistics to make today possible. Excuse me. I would also like to thank Professor Roger McGinty for graciously sharing his time in engaging with the book and for his remarks today. And last but not least, a word from our sponsors. Today's event was also possible thanks to support from UC UCD School of Politics and International Relations, the Center for Peace and Conflict Research and its director Dr. Don Walsh, as well as [snorts] the Center for Democracy Research and its director Dr. Joseph Lacy. My name is Lucia Tiscornia. I'm associate professor at UCD School of Politics and International Relations. And I'm joined by one of my two esteemed co-authors, Dr. Juan Barasin, who is um assistant professor at University of Illinois Chicago, who's here to answer all your questions, concerns, queries. That's that's him. Um, so we're here to introduce our book, Accountability Shock, also co-authored with Professor Got Trejo at the University of Notre Dame. So, at this point, you're probably wondering what this book is about. Let me tell you about two countries, country A and country B. They both transitioned to democracy in 2000 at the tail end of what uh is known as the third wave of democratization in Latin America. Country A is a relatively strong state with a strong economy and no major violence. Country B is a drug producer with a weak economy, a weak state, and a protracted civil war. So, if you were to guess, which one would you say has the highest level of homicidal violence? B. That would be a reasonable answer. Let me tell you now that country A is Mexico and country B is Peru. Between 2006 in 2018, Mexico's homicide rate increased from 9 to 29 homicides per 100,000 people. To put that number in context, it's almost three times as high as what the World Health Organization classifies as epidemic levels of violence. In Mexico, 150,000 people have been killed in confrontations between the state and drug cartels. Over 60,000 people have disappeared and more than 3,000 clandestine mass graves have been found. Mexico's death toll is seven times that of the median civil war of the 20th century. Let that sink in for a minute. Peru, on the other hand, despite being one of the world's largest drug producers and having come out of a bloody civil war, has averaged 3 to 11 homicides per 100,000, a rate comparable to that of Lithuania. So, what's the difference? This book available for purchase wherever you get your books explains it. So Peru has had a series of interventions that fall under the umbrella of what we uh what is called transitional justice. Well-known examples of this would be the truth commission in South Africa, criminal prosecutions in Rwanda or the former Yugoslavia. Other examples under the umbrella of of transitional justice are amnesties or reparations. We believe that these interventions and I'm going to talk about a particular combination prevented Peru from becoming Mexico despite having all the conditions that would have made it possible for Peru to become Mexico. So we look at specialists in violence. So these are members of the authoritarian security apparatus who have developed a unique skill set that employs violent tactics. Our argument is that barring some sort of intervention, these specialists will continue to use their skills whether for the state or a criminal organization or in some other way. There's a market for those skills. Therefore, they will use them. This is a major contributing factor to very high levels of criminal violence that we see today in places like Mexico. As I was mentioning before, homicides attributable to criminal organizations confronting each other and confronting the state and attributable to the state also um committing human rights abuses when confronting criminal groups. The book posits that a specific transitional justice intervention may be effective at reducing this type of epidemic of violence. Transitional justice is a vaccine, if you will, against the disease of violence. So let's talk about these specialists in violence a little more. Why does violence persist after transitions? It's because of them. At the transition, these violence workers who were part of the state repressive architecture have a decision to make. They can choose to stay in government or to defect and become part of organized crime organized crimes payroll. If they stay in government, they can protect criminal groups from the inside or they can combat them. And if they choose to fight them, they can do so through militarized policies or following due process. Note how these three paths, the first three, all lead to more violence due to the role of these specialists in violence in either exercising violence themselves or protecting criminal groups so that they can exercise their own violence or in confronting them through uh aggressive means. Um, the only path that mitigates violence involves accountable security actors that are kept in check. And we argue that this is only possible if they undergo what we call an accountability shock. So to give you a preview of the findings, I'm going to start at the end. What do we find? We look at the impact of truth commissions, trials, and amnesties. And we find that the combination of truth commissions and trials, what we call the accountability shock, is most effective in reducing criminal violence. Truth commissions by themselves are not as effective. Trials are ineffective and [clears throat] amnesties are a spoiler. They can backfire. So what method did we use? Um Barry was alluding to this a few moments ago. So we look at the trajectories of 76 thirdwave democracies combined with in in-depth analyses of six Latin American cases, Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Peru, El Salvador, and Guatemala. And we use a combination of statistical analysis. I promise I won't bore anybody with with that. And deep case knowledge to draw our conclusions. I got ahead of myself there a bit. So up to now I have told you that specialists in violence are a problem for new democracies and that a way to deal with them is through a combination of truth and justice. Let me now explain how that works. What is the mechanism that links transitional justice to a reduction in criminal violence? So we need to go back and understand how specialists in violence have the opportunity to go down the paths that we were discussing a moment ago. Um so the core of that uh sorry I went too far. There we go. The core of that is because the state and criminal organizations are connected. These networks formed during the authoritarian regime because it was in the interest of leaders to buy the specialist loyalty and they did through impunity from violence and abuse and opportunities to benefit economically from illicit markets for [snorts] the sake of providing the regime with plausible deniability in return and protection as well. Leaders may be worried about a coup, they may be worried about assassinations, etc. In this setting, organized crime is not a private enterprise operating where the state is absent. It is a hybrid, a gray zone where state and criminal spheres fuse. So the question at the transition point is not how strong is the state, but what happens to the people who run the coercive apparatus. So the data shows us that trials and truth commissions combined work. This is why we think they work what I'm going to show you now. The combination of truth and trials leads to the exposure and removal of specialists in violence which contributes to the erosion of the violent state which is an apparatus that is built for the use of violence and for the preparation for war. This erosion means a higher likelihood of further criminal prosecutions as well as increased societal condemnation which acts as a signal to other specialists in violence that impunity is no longer available which creates in turn a positive self-reinforcing cycle ultimately reducing defection to and protection of criminal organizations reducing overall levels of violence. um more generally. But the accountability shock also operates on societal expectations. And this is the part that's most relevant to our current context. Perhaps robust transitional justice not only helps dismantle the authoritarian state, it also increases societal support for the protection of human rights and societal expectations of accountability and a limited demand for anti-democratic politics. Conversely, in its absence, the architecture of repression prevails. But more importantly, societies facing high violence begin to demand the very same repression and abuse from the past. Remember this slide because we will come back to it in a moment. To underscore the point of what we found, these are cases plotted along the homicides line. So the the vertical axis there is homicides per 100,000 population. There are two horizontal lines. One at 10 which marks below 10 limited violence above 10 the epidemics of violence uh that uh the WH uh has established and then up 20 and above is what we call criminal war. So really high high levels um of violence. Uh so notably the cases with the lowest homicides are the ones where the accountability shock is present. So look at Peru, look at Argentina. Note also the case of Guatemala which initially did not have the shock. So in the in the 1990s when Guatemala um underwent its postconlict transition um there was a truth commission but there were also amnesties and it took a long time to come to it. it was um in 2008. I'm going to talk about that in a minute. But when it did, it saw benefits. You see a reduction there uh in the homicide rate. So the case of Guatemala also demonstrates that these mechanisms of justice do not have to be tied to a transition. This graph represents a counterfactual exercise. It plots Guatemala's homicide rate over time. It's the line in black, the thick line in black. And it contrasted to a hypothetical homicide rate in Guatemala where the International Commission Against Impunity from 2008 did not happen. That is the dotted line in blue. As you can see, hypothetical Guatemala has a much higher homicide rate. and the um international commission against impunity happened much much later uh than its its transition to democracy. Importantly too, transitional justice is not a silver bullet. Its effects dampen over time. That is what this graph shows. um it's simply the effect of what we call the accountability shock and it it's diminishing sort of payoff over time. Um so the graph suggests that after 10 years of so or so of the implementation the effect becomes basically indistinguishable from zero and before that as time goes on the effect is less and less. This point is important because it reframes transitional justice from a one-off right of passage into something closer to maintenance of accountability infrastructure. The change in trajectory is important, but it is not a oneanddone situation. Countries need to remain vigilant. You may think about the accountability shock as an anti-impunity vaccine, but that vaccine needs boosters in order to remain effective. So why does this matter for policy makers outside Latin America? Obviously, transitional justice has happened in other parts of the world, in Asia, in Africa, in the former Yugoslavia, in the island of Ireland. Eventually, we hope it will happen in Ukraine. And there likely will be a debate about trading stability for justice. every single transition or many of them have had at some point people arguing for a version of we need to let the past be the past and move on and some other people demanding accountability. It is a perennial debate. Here are just two examples of it. So this is then president uh figedo in Brazil at the signing of the amnesty law in 1979 where he declares with this law the government wants to avoid extending processes that traumatize society. It is best to silence certain events in the name of peace. This is prosecutor Julio Strasera at the trial of the Argentine military juna in 1985 where he says we have tried to win peace through oblivion and failed. We have searched for peace through violence and the ex and the extermination of the adversary and failed. Starting now we have the responsibility to establish a peace not based on oblivion but on remembrance not violence but on justice. So how a country decides this has implications for future violence but it also has important implications for the erosion of democracy. The book shows that this debate has real life consequences because transitional stability may very well mean high violence in the future. So trading stability for justice at the time of transition is a short-sighted move. Persistent accountability is needed. This is why the tenure tale matters. Governments have a responsibility to ensure that state coercion remains constrained. I told you earlier to remember a slide. Tolerating transgressions can also lead to an increased tolerance of and demand for anti-democratic behavior. Faced with these demands, states tend to respond with increased policing, surveillance, and impunity. When there is tolerance for militarized politics, then it's okay for these tactics to be used against subjugated people. You can replace the term racially subjugated with immigrant, woman, poor. [snorts] And here's the most dangerous part. When there is tolerance and desensitization to violence, politicians with authoritarian platforms can leverage this sentiment to get elected and enact their policies. The book presents a sobering lesson also when it comes to democratic erosion and what is at stake. I hope this sounds familiar. Um, finally, there are a few other implications that matter for the European context. The first one I have alluded to, the rise of the far right in Europe raises concerns about democratic erosion, the future of democracy. There's also an important case to be made for European donors working on security sector reform assistance. Retreat from SSR, security sector reform, much like forgive and forget is a short-sighted thing. Right now, NATO countries are understandably worried about potential attacks from Russia rather than supporting efforts at police reform elsewhere or even thinking about some of these implications at home. This is understandable but potentially problematic. And last but not least, Northern Ireland had a settlement that prioritized political stability. Paramilitary criminal networks networks are present to this day. Um, organized crime is also a problem in the Republic of Ireland and in a context of conversations around reunification, it would be wise to consider this. I want to leave you with a final thought. The choice at transition is never really between stability and justice. It is between accountability now and violence later. Impunity is not the absence of a policy. It is a policy and it has a body count. The countries in this book that chose accountability did not avoid difficulty. They simply refuse to pass it on to the next generation. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Professor Descornia. That was great. >> I gave you two extra minutes. >> Yeah. Remarkable really keeping to time. Now, Roger, you're perfectly welcome to or take to the mic. What you prefer? >> I I'll stay here. I'm just direct to point my questions towards W. So, um >> yeah, keep your friends close. I know. >> Exactly. The the first thing to say is congratulations. Um, academia is a fairly miserable place full of petty jealousy and we wrap that up or we have a facade and we call it peer review [laughter] and critique, but it's not. It's it's really, you know, small-mindedness. So, it's very rare in academia that that people say congratulations, but really this is careerdefining work. there's an immense amount of empirical work both interviews and statistical analysis but just sheer thinking going into the this book and so huge congratulations. Um and the wonderful thing about this book is that it began in the classroom. It it began with conversations between faculty and doctoral students. And I can just imagine the the the energy there and the the thinking around the puzzle and the puzzle being why do some post author authoritarian states lean more towards democracy and others revert back towards authoritarianism. So it's fantastic. Also in these very gloomy days this is a book with a very positive message. It's a book that says transitional justice works. And let's face it, we're in an era of a massive retreat from peace building. No more comprehensive peace accords, no more peacekeeping missions. Political leaders, particularly in Europe, are in the brace position. There's very little optimism. They discursively they talk about security rather than peace. So to find a book with a positive message and one that is based on a huge amount of evidence is a boon in these fairly dark days. As Lucia explained, the the accountability shock is a combination of things. is it's criminal prosecution plus truth recovery which is all signaling that imp the days of impunity post authoritarian impunity are over and I think this is really important because not only are we in an era in which the peace space is contracting we're also in an era in which the democratic space is contracting this is an era of democratic recession less than 50% of people on the planet live in democracies and that number is decreasing year on year. So again, this is a story that says democracy works under certain conditions. Um, and there's lots of detail in the book. I have to admit it's depressing detail, you know, about baby theft in on an industrial scale in Guatemala or massive uh elicit cemeteries in Mexico or village massacres in in in Peru. But it what comes from this is is an immense amount of research and and depth. I I have four questions all for you while Lucia's work is over. Um and the the they're meant in a constructive way. Um the the first is that this book is championing political science rather than sociology. Um, in many ways the book is about the state and a particular model of the state as an explanation for the root out of authoritarianism rather than a sociological model which says actually let's look at poverty. Let's look at a youth bulge. Let's look at at these societal factors. So I wonder as someone who when they grow up wants to be a sociologist, I wonder is there any room for those sociological explanations? Um the the second question I is to recognize that this book really engages with the peace versus justice conundrum. Many uh analysis say that there has to be a massive tradeoff. You you in a sense you can either have peace or you can h have justice or one has to win out in this. Your book is arguing that the route to peace is actually through justice and a particular form of justice. And I what I find really interesting is that you preface transitional justice with the word robust almost at all times. And I wanted to to know where that robustness begins and ends because it can in some cases become revenge. It can be exclusionary. I think of other peace processes in which there was the the weak smile and the hard swallow in which there was a generosity to the other side. So the you know very much the amnesty route. Um so the I guess the question is what how robust is this robust transitional justice? And then a third question is related to temporality. And I I thought Lucia, your your slide was really really good in illustrating this this 10-year period in in in which these golden 10 years in which the shock has has to happen. And and you put it very well that like a vaccine, it needs boosters along the way. And I'm contrasting that with with another Notre Dame alumni and that's Angela Letterak and her work on slow piece and that's very much about relationship building. It's very much um about taking stock and it was in the back of my mind when I was reading your book about the contrast between these these two in in a sense what comes after this tough parenting this this really hard 10 years and then when a a final question which is deeply unfair and in a sense is beyond the book. But the key to the accountability shock is to discipline the violence specialists. Um so these are people who had worked for in the security sector, the intelligence services. These are the people who can uh morph into criminal gangs and the accountability shock is about showing them that there is no room for impunity. So in a way it's about disciplining these security folks in in both senses of the word. Criminally disciplining them and making sure they are disciplined in respecting the law. And this is where the unfair question comes in because if you look at politics in many western societies, it's actually embracing the violent specialists. the route to the American presidency uh the route to politics in Israel in fact in within the Conservative party in the UK is to is to burnish your military credentials to say that you are a violence specialist you know in a way what we're seeing is the melding of democratization with military credentials and I wonder you know you ended Lucia by by mentioning um democratic recession and and the rise of the far right. Are there any lessons there? Um so sorry for the unfair question but let let me go back to the my beginning point which is one of of um congratulations. If anyone is writing a book they will know that they share the house with a very un very unhappy person. the the book is a persona that haunts the house. You know, it you you go into the kitchen to make a cup of coffee and there's the book manuscript, not in physical form, but just floating there. But when you press submit, it is such a wonderful feeling and I hope that buzz is still with you. So, congratulations on a wonderful book. Well done. >> Thank you, Roger. really really elegant and eloquent remarks, Roger. Thank you. Now, Juan, you thought you were going to have a nice evening out in Dublin. >> I know. >> You were going to listen to some colleagues talk about a book that you wrote and then here you are on the stage. So, >> I know >> you see we agreed that Juan was going to take the questions first. Is that all right? Is that >> I I'll help. >> Okay. Juan, do do your best. >> I will. And if if I say some nonsense, it's the jetlag. So, [laughter] I just got into Dublin today this morning. But uh first I want to thank Lucia for organizing this event here in in Dublin and all the other people who made this happen at the institute at UCD. Uh it's just delightful to be presenting the book in Europe for the first time. Uh and Roger I I can't you can't imagine how deeply moving your comments are and your your praise. It means just a lot to me and I'm sure for Luc I'm I'm sure for GMO as well. So this is just fantastic. U let me start with your first question about the disciplines because I I think that's it's a it's a fantastic question. It's just it just displays kind of a sense of where we are. It it's interesting because political science as a discipline came rather late in the study of criminal violence and it was somewhat of a struggle within the discipline to uh to place this topic within what political scientists do and frequently it's like well criminal violence is something that sociologist criminologists and then econom economists started kind of uh taking over the space as well but political science kind of kept itself to it but over the last two two decades or so, uh there's been this kind of shift within political science. Uh and there's kind of an emerging political science of of crime that really focuses on organized crime and and and trying to understand going beyond this kind of understanding of crime and particularly organized crime just emergences in spaces of state absence. And there's tremendous work being done here. And I think our book is kind of in this direction where we say no actually when you look at organized crime, it doesn't exist without the state in the sense that it requires some form of uh specialist in violence and other state actors for it to actually uh thrive, exist and and develop. Uh so when we as political scientists come in, we say well you know if you want to study this particular form of crime which has these consequences that Lucia mentioned in terms of death and kind of everything that is associated with any form of war uh you need to understand the state you and and it's not as a as Lucia mentioned it's not a question of like you have those weak states therefore you have strong organized crime. Actually what our work and other work of other people has shown is like the strongest form of organized crime happens where you have this very strong intersection. It's not the absence. It's when we have specialist in violence really involved in this process. So that's how we kind of come into this. And this doesn't mean that the the tremendous work that has been done in sociology and others is meaningless. Actually it it builds on what we do builds on this and and and takes it and incorporates it into this framework. Uh there's some forms of of criminal violence uh kind of less organized violence, criminal violence, so to speak, where a lot of the factors you mentioned in terms of like family structure and and uh and other uh kind of more sociological variables, they are indeed very important and for a lot of the things that we don't and can't explain the book, for example, the variation you see within countries, right? like a country like Mexico or Brazil which are in the book we we take them as units but once you open them up and our own work in other projects has done this you see that the changes within the tremendous variation within countries and you can't explain that with this you can what our book says is you can understand why there are countries like Brazil where this type of criminal war or Mexico happens but the differences that we see within countries we need to look at some of the sociological work and the work in economics and they work in and other work in political science. So I think what we're seeing is like disciplines working together in the best possible way at least I I I think I can speak for us >> as a group we have tremendous respect for the work that comes from sociology and and and political and economics and criminology and we're just kind of say well this is what we bring to the table as uh political scientists. Uh I think I'm going to let you talk about the conundrum of peace and justice. Um >> I can talk about slow piece as well if you want. >> Yes, I I will just give something to but let me say something about temporality and and for I'm sure Lucia is going to say way smarter stuff than I am. Uh the first one is and and Lucia mentioned this uh when we look at these processes this accountability shock is just the starting point of a tremendous change that can happen in societies. But if if this is not followed by what we call boosters, like going back to this kind vaccine analogy, some of these processes start fading. And I think that Lucia mentioned that like the positive case of of Peru, which is kind of very surprising case like you would think Peru would be in the midst of criminal wars. It isn't. Uh but over time, they just stuck to that initial accountability shock and did nothing else. And over time, it started fading. And now we're seeing in Peru kind of the result of that which is so you start seeing stronger militarization you see trying to the collapse of this accountability shock. uh so if you don't do other things and I think this is where these other mechanisms of transitional justice play a role and it's not only at the national level but also at the grassroots level right uh so our best case is in a more positive sense is Argentina where this accountability shock of tremendous proportions was followed by other forms of uh of remembrance of of building up uh kind of relationships in in in society and that is critical but I I I I I and I Angie's amazing work. I think I'll let you refer to that. [laughter] Uh and then finally this idea of I I think at the core of our book is the idea that in democracy it is not enough only to have free and fair elections. And that might work for a while. and kind of this idea of let's not talk about the past because we want just to have these elections and we want kind of the stakeholders to commit to the elections. Uh but we always frequently forget that what elections determine is who gets to wield the tremendous power of the state and the coercive power of the state. Uh and if there is no transformation in the logic of state coercion and how this power can be wielded by those who are elected to wield it, then we frequently end up in these uh horror scenarios in which democratic elites are either using or accepting the use of state coercion in ways that are actually not what we want. Right? So we have to I think what what our book is also showing is that these countries that did these pro robust transitional justice processes they they deterred kind of immed in a kind of an immediate term uh the authoritarian specialist in violence from going into organized crime or engaging in these practices that created the escalations of violence that lead to criminal wars. But as Lucia mentioned, in the long run, they fundamentally reshape how state and society see how coercion is used, right? And what is acceptable and they constrain the the the logic of state coercion into something that is more accountable in it in and of itself, right? So if we don't do these transformations, we end up with violent democracies. And over time, these violent democracies tend to also erode. to your point and you said it's unfair but actually this is something we've been it's not in the book but we've been thinking about it all the time and you think about the case of the United States right and other cases across the world we live now unfortunately in a kind of an era of of impunity or kind of the it's not only impunity but kind of the the the promotion and kind of the the this very just shameless promotion of impunity as as something that is good, right? And I think what we're here to say is like if if this is what is happening, this doesn't lead in a good direction even for established democracies, right? And the United States has a lot of episodes of violence uh and now we're observing a lot of episodes of violence through the use of state coercion in my own home own city in Chicago. uh that if that type of violence goes unaccountable and if we keep letting a state specialist in violence doing that what they were doing in the streets of Chicago and LA and others at some point it it become this becomes acceptable right and this leads to more and more violent democracies and I I I hope that's not the path I hope we're still in time to stop this from happening in in kind of western and North American democracies but >> thank Thank you. >> Thank you. Uh I'll try not to repeat uh because I think many of the things you said uh help answer uh some of the the questions that Roger post. Thank you so much for your very very kind words and for your uh insightful read of the book. So is there room for sociological explanations? I think absolutely there's plenty of room for example. Uh if we think in terms of okay well not all specialists in violence defect. not all specialists in violence who stay decide to use violence uh in a in a way that is indiscriminate or abusive. Uh and I don't think that a more of a perhaps institutional you know architectural explanation can account for those subtle differences. So that I think that's one way uh in which sociological and even you know so socio-csychological explanations for for violent work uh you know still have very much um um room and importance. Um so on on the peace versus justice question and where does um uh sort of the the robustness begin and end uh I think that's that is also crucial. So the point that we're trying to make is that the new architecture of uh security uh needs to work so that it keeps the state accountable. So in keeping the state accountable you would you would hope that you would prevent sort of the victor's justice um impetus. uh and so this is a this is and that's why it's also important to have like the vaccine boosters because then you would have a battery of other tools you would strengthen the justice system um perhaps in a combination of and not that I want to bring Colombia to bear but you know in a combination combination of some retribution but also some restorative elements to it. uh there is security sector reform and how do we organize you know the the the war machine so that it doesn't abuse uh so I think you know it's those it's it's it's that self-containment and self-accountability that we're that we are um thinking about is an architectural change to contain the state. Um, then to the to the the slow piece argument, I think there there's there's something there too, right? So, we talk about these top-down broad interventions, but we're not necessarily thinking about everyday peace. Uh, and we're not but not because we don't think it matters. It's because of well, our the story that we wanted to tell was a different one. Um but of course without you know without repairing societal relationships without the everyday practices that make people's lives better that this doesn't matter very much at the end of the day. Uh because if you have disgruntled people who feel not you know not paid attention to by the state not protected etc that's where many of these problems begin. Uh so that's so that's essential. Uh and then I wanted to make one last point about um your your point on sort of disciplining um disciplining security folks and you know the roots the but essentially the roots of the American presidency is to to um to kind of say we're violent specialists. Two things in relation to that. one is that as I understand it and the Americans in the room can correct me if I'm saying something that's inaccurate um one of the foundations of the American state has to do with the separation between the executive and the military. So there's a there's a close relationship there but it's a sense of like the American military is was very disciplined. Um but so so that's a difference I think. Uh and now we're now we're watching the undisiplined state unhinged, right? [snorts] Uh so ICE is the opposite of the of the disciplined state. But also this is the military. It's not the police. As Juan was saying before, the the police in the United States have been abusing, have been undisiplined in part. There are many many reasons for that from historical racism all the way to um the the sort of uh extremely decentralized nature of policing in the United States and we talk about that uh more. So those people are not disciplined. So I think part I think that's kind of there's two different levels to to maybe the conversation in the United States. Um I'm conscious of the time. >> Fantastic. So, >> thank you so much. We will be going the audience for any questions and reminding everyone online as well. You can use the Q&A function. I have one question I'd like to put, but before that, Roger to take it or leave it. Do you want to respond to any of the responses? >> I I'll leave it for now. Cool. >> I have a question al also as a as a political scientist, I guess, and it only comes to me whilst I was listening to your first question, and I'm wondering about is there anything you can say about how we get to the start? So I'm thinking about agency. I'm thinking about leadership. I understand that the outputs, the outcomes are very different in the cases, but I realized as I read your book, I wasn't thinking about what actually brought the countries to those >> starting points. So can you say anything about that? Uh actually that's we we that's a a frequent question that we get because it it it it might seem that some of the outcomes that we're seeing in terms of peace and and criminal war are predetermined by other things that also kind of explain why these countries have transitional justice and and there's some things that in in general for example case like Argentina the entire kind of authoritarian regime collapses and in essence that kind of democracy emerges out of this this collapse and I say well this is kind of natural that such a process would emerge in in a place like Argentina and then in Brazil it was more and more of a kind of a negotiating transition. So it was like the military is kind of part of the negotiations to kind of enable civilian government. But as we and part of what we were doing in the book, we really go deep into these uh kind of cases in all of these countries and we were looking at the moments of transition and even in cases like Argentina where yeah these things matter like shaping what decisions are m being made there's tremendous amount of agency going on in these moments of transition and that kind of remits kind of these canonical texts of of of kind of democratic transitions where at the end of the day all of this is kind of up for grabs. perhaps in these moments and both and and this is something that we've this is not something that we did as like a focus of our book but we we did it as part of like the work of the book. We saw two very important things happening. One is the kind of the the importance of specific leaderships in these moments. So Rahul alons in in Argentina and and kind of the transitional government in Peru that enables these these transitional justice moments right to happen and it's the start of this robust accountability shock. So leadership matters especially in moments of transition. So there's more that they can do that they think. Sometimes they're constrained by these ideas that if they do this there's going to be instability. So they're very much risk averse but some elites are kind of capable of seeing beyond this and seeing the importance of accountability and sometimes it they do things that they don't know are going to lead to this right so along starts this process in Argentina and he thinks it's going to be like a kind of a narrow set of policies but then all of a sudden just takes a tremendous dynamic and then it's this huge accountability shock and this happens in part because of the Second element, it's the importance of civil society organizations in these countries also during authoritarian periods that did just tremendous amount of work in registering uh gathering information about all the things that were happening during uh authoritarian periods. And once there's this moment where this becomes at least possible, it's this push through of of civil society in countries but also outside that helps this happen. So like countries like Argentina and Peru had very robust civil society organizations just really kind of took this window of opportunity to like really push for these things and in places where civil society was more fragmented and kind of willing to engage in some compromises uh it was less so. >> And you include the church when you're talking about civil society. >> Yes. It it varies by country, but like in fact in some of the in some of the countries that didn't have this, the only people that were doing some of the accountability were churches. So Brazil, for example. [music] >> This podcast is brought to you by the IEA, sharing ideas, shaping [music] policy.