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

该比较项目运用过渡时期司法的概念，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）如何应对2008年后金融危机的根源和后果。经济方面的崩溃在其他地方进行了很好的讨论;拟议中的项目认为，可以从危机中吸取重要的政治和法律的教训，但如果只从经济透镜来看待它，这些教训就会被遗漏。简单地说，过渡时期司法是过去四十年来发展起来的一个框架，它考虑的是国家政治精英如何在民众对真相和正义的呼吁与危机后对稳定的实际需要之间取得平衡。起诉、真相调查、赦免或有罪不罚都是备受研究的机制。值得注意的是，这些机制已在审议中的案件中得到运用。西班牙和葡萄牙只采取了最低限度的步骤来解决危机的根源，实际上是在推行豁免政策。冰岛和塞浦路斯成立了特设真相委员会，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类似的背景条件，社会制定了不同的政策反应，并确定每种反应的优势和局限性。这很重要研究试行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反应，降低社会动荡程度，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与法律的交叉;它侧重于政治和体制失败问题以及法律在促进问责、责任和从经济危机中吸取政治教训方面的作用。潜在的应用和好处该项目是学术和政策相关。在学术层面，它将利用过渡时期司法的分析框架来考虑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，而另一些国家则没有。经济观点现在主导了有关辩论;不幸的是，这些观点忽视了经济危机时期的政治和法律的责任问题。研究结果将涉及政治学、法学、经济学等社会科学的广泛领域，有可能为经济危机的研究提供新的视角，同时，研究范围也将有助于政策制定。首先，该项目将探讨国际货币基金组织援助所附带的外部监督可能如何影响国内政治领导人处理过去的问题。该项目将根据在实地工作和与货币基金组织和欧盟行政人员以及国家政治精英进行半结构化访谈期间收集的经验材料，编写和分发政策简报，其中载有改进未来救助计划设计的实际建议，为解决正义、真相和问责制问题创造空间。其他政策简报会将概括每个国家的主要调查结果;这些将是当地政治精英、政府部门、决策者和民间社会活动家感兴趣的。所有简报都将以电子方式提供。此外，一个独特的开放式在线网站将载有丰富的经验数据，包括政治决定、法院裁决和其他法律的先例;这些将对全球律师、法律的学者和决策者以及其他有关各方，如活动家和非政府组织具有价值。

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.