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

Accountability Shock presents the first systematic explanation of why some 'Third Wave' democracies developed peacefully while others became the world's most violent. The book demonstrates how robust transitional justice processes – combining truth commissions with prosecution of autocratic-era atrocities – prevent criminal violence in new democracies. By holding authoritarian specialists in violence accountable, new democracies can break state impunity, preventing them from becoming key actors in the production of large-scale criminal violence and reshaping the logic of state coercion in democracy. With in-depth analyses of six Latin American cases, the work illuminates why transitional justice is crucial for addressing state-criminal collusion in hybrid contexts. Forged out of a close collaboration between transitional justice scholars and practitioners, Accountability Shock strengthens existing connections while offering practical insights for countries still grappling with authoritarian legacies and violence.

Guillermo Trejo is Professor of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame and Director of the Violence and Transitional Justice Lab at the Kellogg Institute for International Studies. He studies criminal and political violence, human rights, and transitional justice. Trejo is the co-author of Votes, Drugs, and Violence: The Political Logic of Criminal Wars in Mexico (2020, with Sandra Ley) and the author of Popular Movements in Autocracies: Religion, Repression, and Indigenous Collective Action in Mexico (2012).

Lucía Tiscornia is Assistant Professor in the School of Politics and International Relations at University College Dublin and Faculty Fellow at the Geary Institute for Public Policy. She studies police and criminal violence, criminal governance, transitional justice, and mixed-methods approaches to research.

Juan Albarracín is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Illinois, Chicago. He studies criminal governance/politics, criminal and political violence, transitional justice, and electoral politics.