Escaping Justice: Impunity for State Crimes in the Age of Accountability

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, how do states continue to escape justice? This book presents 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. Cyanne E. Loyle develops this theory through in-depth fieldwork from Rwanda, Uganda, and Northern Ireland conducted over the last ten years. Research in each of these cases reveals a unique strategy of adaption: coercion, containment, and concession. Using evidence from these cases, Loyle traces the conditions under which a government pursues its chosen strategies and the resulting transitional justice outcomes. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Cyanne E. Loyle is the Political Science Board of Visitors Early Career Professor of Political Science at Pennsylvania State University and a Senior Researcher at the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO). She is also the co-Director of the Northern Ireland Research Initiative and co-creator of the Post-Conflict Justice (PCJ) and During-Conflict Justice (DCJ) databases. Her work has been funded by the US National Science Foundation, the Norwegian Research Council, and the US Institute of Peace, and published in venues such as Comparative Political Studies, International Studies Quarterly, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Journal of Human Rights, Journal of Peace Research and Perspectives on Politics. Her website is www.cyanneloyle.com.