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Abstract
While claims abound regarding transitional justice's importance for democracy building in transitioning countries, empirical investigations of these remain limited or have produced contradictory findings. This article seeks to contribute to these debates by investigating the relationship between transitional justice and democratic institution building in Uganda – looking in particular at the rule of law, the security forces and participation. It does so by exploring the causal mechanisms linking transitional justice to democracy, that is, the means through which transitional justice exerts its impact. Transitional justice is widely expected to impact democratic institution building through three mechanisms: (de)legitimation, reform, and empowerment. However, this article finds that in Uganda, transitional justice's impact through these is more circumscribed than has so far been assumed, and that it sometimes impacts democratic institution building negatively. The Ugandan experience furthermore suggests that in contexts of armed conflict and a hybrid regime, expectations about the extent to which transitional justice can support democratic institution building should be lowered.
Acknowledgments
The article forms part of a broader comparative research project on ‘The impact of transitional justice measures on democratic institution-building’, undertaken jointly at the School of Business and Law, University of East London, and the Netherlands Institute for Human Rights, Utrecht University (www.tjdi.org). The author would like to thank Chandra Lekha Sriram and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on drafts of this article.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. Thoms, Ron, and Paris, “The Effect of Transitional Justice,” 4.
2. The year 1986 is taken as the transition moment because the NRM's arrival into power signalled a change in regime. Although the transition failed to produce full democracy, this does not change the fact that 1986 represents a transitional moment that offered an opportunity for democratic change.
3. Minow, Between Vengeance; Sikkink and Walling, “The Impact of Human Rights Trials”; Nettelfield, Courting Democracy; Horne, “Assessing the Impact”; Weiffen, “The forgotten factor.”
4. Snyder and Vinjamuri, “Trials and Errors”; Wiebelhaus-Brahm, Truth Commissions; Olsen, Payne, and Reiter, Transitional Justice; McMahon and Forsythe, “The ICTY's Impact.”
5. Osiel, Mass Atrocity; Bloxham, Genocide.
6. Kim, “Local, National, International Determinants.”
7. Skaar, Judicial Independence.
8. Olsen, Payne, and Reiter, Transitional Justice, 144–6.
9. Arnould and Sriram, Pathways of Impact, 3–4. The conceptualisation of democracy used here draws from the literature on the quality of democracy and from Morlino, “Authoritarian Legacies.”
10. Duggan, “Show me your Impact,” 203; Mendeloff, “Truth-Seeking.”
11. Gerring, “The Mechanismic Worldview,” 163–4; Elster, “A plea for mechanisms,” 47–9; Mahoney, “Beyond Correlational Analysis,” 580–1.
12. Falleti and Lynch, “Context,” 1145.
13. Akhavan, “Beyond Impunity”; Burke-White, “Double Edged Tribunals,” 22–6.
14. Wiebelhaus-Brahm, “Promoting Accountability.”
15. Barahona de Brito et al., The Politics of Memory, 313.
16. Hayner, Unspeakable Truths, 190–194; Van Zyl, “Promoting Transitional Justice,” 216.
17. Ndulo and Duthie, “Role of Judicial Reform,” 266–7; de Greiff, “A Normative Conception,” 28.
18. de Greiff, “Articulating the Links,” 55–62.
19. O'Connell, Empowering the Disadvantaged.
20. Muddell, Limitations and Opportunities, 2.
21. Kjaer, “Fundamental Change”; Tripp, Museveni's Uganda.
22. Brett, “Neutralising the Use of Force,” 136–8.
23. Kibanja, Kajumba and Johnson, “Ethnocultural Conflict.”
24. Lindemann, “Just Another Change of Guard?” 395–405; Minorities at Risk Dataset.
25. Human Rights Watch, Curtailing Criticism.
26. Tripp, Museveni's Uganda, 86–91; International Bar Association, Judicial Independence.
27. One of the ICC indictees, Raska Luwiya, has since been confirmed dead while two others, Vincent Otti and Okot Odhiambo, are suspected to have died in 2007 and 2013 respectively. LRA commander Domnic Ongwen was transferred to the ICC following his capture/surrender in the Central African Republic in January 2015. The case before the ICD against Thomas Kwoyelo stalled after a 2011 ruling that the amnesty was applicable, but is expected to resume after the Supreme Court reversed this decision in April 2015. ADF leader Jamil Mukulu is expected to be tried before the ICD following his capture in Tanzania in April 2015.
28. Akhavan, “The LRA Case,” 416; for a divergent view see Refugee Law Project, Ambiguous Impacts, 15–8.
29. For a critical discussion of the ICC's prosecutorial choices see Clark, “Chasing Cases.”
30. Interview with Ugandan civil society actor, Kampala, February 2014; Human Rights Watch, Uprooted and Forgotten, 41–5.
31. Interview with foreign official, Kampala, February 2014.
32. Nouwen, The ICC's Intervention, 24.
33. Quinn, “Constraints,” 417.
34. Branch, “Uganda's Civil War,” 184; Freeland, “Rethinking the State,” 309.
35. Nouwen and Werner, “Doing Justice,” 947–50.
36. Interview with judicial official, Kampala, February 2014.
37. Fisher, “When it pays to be a Fragile State.”
38. Quinn, “Constraints,” 419.
39. Wierda, “Comparison of the Legacy.”
40. Nouwen, The ICC's Intervention, 10–1; interviews with Ugandan and international civil society actors, Kampala, February 2014.
41. CIVHR, report, 587–605.
42. Interview with foreign official, Kampala, February 2014; Human Rights Watch, “Get the Gun!”, 67.
43. Kampala's sensitivity to allegations of army human rights abuses when these might affect the international standing of the regime and UPDF is illustrated by its vociferous reaction to the publication of the UN Mapping Exercise Report in 2010, which detailed human rights abuses committed by the UPDF in neighbouring DRC, and its subsequent threat to close the OHCHR office in the country in retaliation. http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Countries/ZR/DRC_Report_Comments_Uganda.pdf
44. Interviews with Ugandan civil society actors and foreign official, Kampala, January–February 2014.
45. International Crimes Division Annual Report 2012; Interview with Ugandan lawyer, Kampala, February 2014.
46. Interviews with Ugandan and international civil society actors and ICC official, Kampala, February 2014.
47. Interviews with Ugandan civil society actor and ICC official, Kampala, February 2014.
48. Nouwen, The ICC's Intervention, 22–4.
49. Interviews with Ugandan lawyer and foreign official, Kampala, February 2014.
50. Interview with Ugandan civil society actor, Kampala, February 2014.
51. CIVHR, Report, 512–31.
52. Interview Uganda civil society actor, Kampala, February 2014.
53. Blackmore, “Creating a Conflict Heritage.”
54. Interview with Ugandan civil society actor, Kampala, January 2014.
55. Interview with international civil society actor, Kampala, February 2014.
56. Interview with Ugandan civil society actor, Kampala, January 2014.
57. Interviews with Ugandan lawyer and with member of the Amnesty commission, Kampala, February 2014; Justice and Reconciliation Project, Who Forgives Whom?, 3–4.
58. Interviews with Ugandan civil society actor and foreign official, Kampala, February 2014.
59. Clark, “Bringing them all back home,” 248.