Tuesday, April 19, 2016

Chakravarty: Investing in Authoritarian Rule: Punishment and Patronage in Rwanda's Gacaca Courts for Genocide Crimes

Anuradha Chakravarty (Univ. of South Carolina - Political Science) has published Investing in Authoritarian Rule: Punishment and Patronage in Rwanda's Gacaca Courts for Genocide Crimes (Cambridge Univ. Press 2016). Here's the abstract:
This book shows how Rwanda's transitional courts that tried genocide crimes - the gacaca - produced social complicity and cemented authoritarian rule. It is unique for its in-depth investigation of the courts' legal operations: confessions, denunciation, and lay judging, and shows how targeted incentives such as grants of clemency, opportunities for private gain, and career advancement drew the masses into the orbit of the ethnic minority-dominated regime. Using previously untapped data, it illustrates how a decade of mass trials constructed a tacit patronage-driven relationship in which the interests of the citizenry became tied to the authoritarian elite that had discretionary power to grant or withdraw those benefits at will.