Onur Bakiner, Truth Commission Impact: Insights from Recent Scholarship

Transitional Justice Institute: Public Lectures and Events

In this talk, Onur Bakiner provided an overview of the philosophical underpinnings, conceptual frames, and methodological choices informing the scholarship on truth commission impact to examine whether, how, how much, and why truth commissions influence policy, court decisions, and social norms. The findings of empirical scholarship range from partial confirmation of these bold and at times vague expectations to damning accounts of commissions’ failure to deliver.

What is more, scholars have set implicit and explicit standards for what coming to terms with the past truth a truth commission should mean: building liberal democratic institutions, transforming socioeconomic, gendered and racialized hierarchies, and reflecting local values, norms and power dynamics. Especially those studies that demand attentiveness to social justice and local justice have reported disappointment with truth commissions’ achievements.

Comments were provided by:

• Cath Collins, Professor of Transitional Justice at Ulster University and Director of the Observatorio de Justicia Transicional, Universidad Diego Portales, Chile

• Brandon Hamber, Professor at International Conflict Research Institute (INCORE) and John Hume and Thomas P. O'Neill Chair in Peace, Ulster University.

Speaker profile

Onur Bakiner is Associate Professor of Political Science at Seattle University, USA. His research and teaching interests include transitional justice, human rights, and judicial politics. His book Truth Commissions: Memory, Power, and Legitimacy (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015) investigates the role truth commissions play in contemporary societies, and was awarded the Best Book Award by the Human Rights Section of the American Political Science Association in 2017.