Now more than ever, the international community plays a central role in pressing governments to hold themselves to account. Despite pressure to adhere to global human rights norms, governments continue to benefit from impunity for their past crimes. In an age of accountability, how do states continue to escape justice?
Escaping Justice: Impunity for State Crimes in the Age of Accountability (Cambridge UP, 2025)presents a theory of strategic adaptation that explains the conditions under which governments adopt transitional justice without a genuine commitment to holding state forces to account. Cyanne E. Loyle develops this theory through in-depth fieldwork conducted over the last ten years in Rwanda, Uganda, and Northern Ireland. Research in each of these cases reveals a unique strategy of adaptation: coercion, containment, and concession.
Using evidence from these cases, Loyle traces the conditions under which a government pursues its chosen strategies and the outcomes of transitional justice.
Our guest is Professor Cyanne Loyle, who is the Political Science Board of Visitors Early Career Professor of Political Science at Penn State University and a Senior Researcher at the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO).
Our host is Eleonora Mattiacci, an Associate Professor of Political Science at Amherst College. She is the author of "Volatile States in International Politics" (Oxford University Press, 2023).
