Truth, Accountability or Impunity? Transitional Justice and the Economic Crisis

比较项目运用过渡司法概念，即“处理过去”，调查六个欧洲社会(西班牙、葡萄牙、希腊、爱尔兰、塞浦路斯、冰岛)是如何接受2008年后金融危机的起源和后果的。崩盘的经济方面在其他地方得到了很好的讨论；拟议中的项目辩称，可以从危机中吸取重要的政治和法律教训，但只从经济角度来看，这些教训被忽视了。简而言之，过渡时期司法是过去40年发展起来的一个框架，它考虑了国家政治精英如何在民众对真相和正义的呼声与危机后实现稳定的实际需要之间取得平衡。起诉、追回真相和赦免或有罪不罚是经过大量研究的机制。值得注意的是，这些机制已经部署在审议中的案件中。西班牙和葡萄牙只采取了最低限度的措施来解决危机的根源，实际上是奉行豁免政策。冰岛和塞浦路斯成立了特别真相委员会，以记录危机的原因。爱尔兰和希腊已经起诉并定罪了一些被认为负有责任的银行家和政客。该项目试图解释为什么尽管有相似的背景条件，各国社会却制定了不同的政策对策，并查明每种对策的优点和局限性。这事很重要。审查试验政策机制的社会的比较经验将有助于在危机时期设计更好的政策应对措施，降低社会动荡的程度，提高政治合法性，并为有意义的体制改革铺平道路。该项目明确涉及政治和法律的交叉；它侧重于政治和体制失败的问题，以及法律在促进问责、责任和从经济危机中进行政治学习方面的作用。潜在的应用和BENEFITS该项目既有学术意义，也有政策意义。在学术层面，它将使用过渡司法的分析框架来思考为什么某些国家的政治精英制定政策来解释经济危机的政治和体制原因，而其他国家则不这样做。经济观点现在主导了相关辩论；不幸的是，这些观点忽视了经济危机时期的政治和法律责任问题。该项目的发现将与包括政治学、法学和经济学在内的社会科学的广泛学科相关，并有可能为经济危机的研究引入一个新的视角。同时，该项目的范围将使其能够为政策制定做出贡献。首先，该项目将探索IMF纾困附带的外部监督可能会如何影响国内政治领导人处理过去的问题。基于实地调查期间收集的经验材料，以及对IMF和欧盟高管以及各国政治精英的半结构化访谈，该项目将编写和分发政策简报，提出切实的建议，以改进未来救助计划的设计，为解决正义、真相和问责问题创造空间。其他政策简报将概括每个国家的核心调查结果；这些将引起当地政治精英、政府部门、政策制定者和民间社会活动家的兴趣。所有简报都将公之于众。此外，一个独特的在线开放访问网站将包含丰富的经验数据，包括政治裁决、法院裁决和其他法律判例；这些数据将对全球律师、法律学者和政策制定者以及活动家和非政府组织等其他有关方面具有价值。

CONTEXTThe comparative project applies concepts of transitional justice, namely, 'dealing with the past', to investigate how six European societies (Spain, Portugal, Greece, Ireland, Cyprus, Iceland) have come to terms with the origins and consequences of the post-2008 financial crisis. The economic aspects of the crash are well discussed elsewhere; the proposed project argues significant political and legal lessons can be learned from the crisis, but these are missed by viewing it only through an economic lens. Simply stated, transitional justice, a framework developed over the past forty years, considers how national political elites balance popular calls for truth and justice with the pragmatic need for stability in the aftermath of crisis. Prosecutions, truth recovery and amnesties or impunity are much studied mechanisms. Notably, these mechanisms have been deployed in the cases under consideration. Spain and Portugal took only minimal steps to address the causes of the crisis, in effect, pursuing a policy of immunity. Iceland and Cyprus set up ad hoc truth commissions to document the causes of the crisis. Ireland and Greece have prosecuted and convicted a number of bankers and politicians deemed responsible. The project seeks to explain why, despite similar background conditions, societies have formulated different policy responses and to identify the strengths and limitations of each response. This is important. Examining the comparative experience of societies who experiment with policy mechanisms will contribute to the design of better policy responses in times of crisis, decreasing the level of social upheaval, boosting political legitimacy and paving the way for meaningful institutional reform. This project is explicitly about the intersection of politics and law; it focuses on issues of political and institutional failure and the role of law in promoting accountability, responsibility and political learning from economic crises. POTENTIAL APPLICATIONS AND BENEFITSThe project is both academic and policy relevant. At the academic level, it will use the analytical framework of transitional justice to consider why political elites in certain countries develop policies to account for the political and institutional causes of an economic crisis, while others do not. Economic perspectives now dominate relevant debates; unfortunately, these overlook issues of political and legal responsibility in times of economic crisis. The project's findings will be relevant to a wide range of disciplines in the social sciences, including politics, law, and economics, and have the potential to introduce a novel perspective to the study of economic crises.At the same time, the scope of the project will allow it to contribute to policymaking. First, the project will explore the ways external supervision attached to IMF bailouts may affect domestic political leaders in dealing with the past. Based on empirical material collected during fieldwork and semi-structured interviews with IMF and EU executives as well as national political elites, the project will prepare and distribute policy briefings with practical recommendations to improve the design of future bailouts, creating space for issues of justice, truth and accountability to be addressed. Other policy briefings will encapsulate the central findings for each country; these will be of interest to local political elites, government departments, policymakers, and civil society activists. All briefings will be made publically available. In addition, a unique online open-access website will contain rich empirical data, including political decisions, court rulings and other legal precedents; these will be of value to lawyers, legal scholars and policymakers globally, as well as other interested parties, such as activists and NGOs.