The Price of Justice: International Criminal Accountability and Civil Conflict
Abstract: I argue that the justice cascade, the rapid trend toward holding leaders accountable for human rights violations, inadvertently exacerbates conflict. By undermining the possibility of a safe exile for culpable leaders, international justice incentivizes such leaders to cling to power and gamble for resurrection when they would otherwise flee abroad. As evidence, I examine the arrest of former Chilean leader Augusto Pinochet in the United Kingdom in 1998—the first time a leader was arrested in a foreign state for international crimes—as a plausibly exogenous shock to other leaders’ beliefs about the likelihood of post-tenure international punishment. I show that before 1998 leader culpability does not affect patterns of exile or civil conflict duration. After 1998, however, I find that (1) culpable leaders are less likely to go into exile and (2) civil conflicts last longer when culpable leaders are in power.
