Accepted Paper
Paper short abstract
Does failed justice fuel new violence? This study quantifies how poor transitional justice (TJ) creates a culture of impunity, leading post-conflict states to violently repress nonviolent movements. I'll explain this using the FE Regression model, where my DV: state repression, and IV: TJ Quality.
Paper long abstract
Recently, countries like Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Madagascar, Morocco, Peru, the Philippines, Indonesia, Mexico, Bulgaria, Serbia, etc., experienced youth uprisings, often referred to as Generation Z (Gen-Z) protests. Some of these countries have experienced conflict in the past, some haven’t. The level of human rights abuses during these protests varies significantly; for instance, Bangladesh had 1,400 casualties, while Nepal had 76, and others reported very few or no casualties at all. Why do some states show such brutality? Doesn't the fear of accountability deter them?
I am interested in understanding whether a ‘culture of impunity’, which allows states to use violence against their own nonviolent citizens, has arisen from a failure to address past injustices, indicative of poor transitional justice. I hypothesize that post-conflict countries with lower "Transitional Justice Quality" scores will demonstrate significantly higher levels of violent repression against nonviolent protesters.
To investigate this, I will examine both violent and nonviolent post-conflict countries with transitional justice mechanisms in place. I will assess Transitional Justice Quality using the Transitional Justice Database (TJDB) and evaluate the level of repression or crackdowns using the Nonviolent and Violent Campaigns and Outcomes (NAVCO) dataset. Both datasets are publicly available and considered reliable. The time frame for my study will be from 1990 to 2025. I plan to use the Fixed Effects Regression (FE) method, controlling for the variables such as GDP per capita (from the World Bank data), level of democracy (Polity V data), and history of conflict (ACLED or UCDP data).
Making sense of protests in south Asia and beyond: implications for democratic participation and accountability