The Hidden Face of Justice: Fairness, Discrimination and Distribution in Transitional Justice Processes

Abstract

This article contributes to the literature on the impact of transitional justice measures using behavioral evidence from experiments. We argue that there is a distributional dilemma at the heart of transitional justice programs, given that the State must allocate goods and services both to victims and excombatants. Individual and social preferences over these processes matter, given that they are likely to scale up to undermine or increase public support for transitional justice programs. We offer evidence from the Colombian case, to show what we call the hidden face of justice effect, which occurs when in the transition from war to peace distributional dilemmas arise and generate a social sanction function that creates negative incentives that can affect the achievement of reintegration of ex-combatants and jeopardizes the maintenance of peace. In order to explore the microfoundations that underlie the differences between allocations to victims and ex-combatants, we use data from field experiments and find that ex-combatants expect lower transfers from public officers and citizens and indeed receive lower transfers, if compared to the victims and the control groups included in the study, despite the fact that third-party observers have the power to punish senders when making offers seen by the third-party as unfair.

Measuring perceptions of postconflict actors’ economic behavior: The case of Colombia.

“…For work evaluating the economic behavior of actors of the Colombian conflict, see Hopfensitz & Miquel-Florensa, 2014; Moya, 2018; Vélez et al, 2016. The closest paper related to our question goes in the opposite direction: ex-combatants reporting how much money civil society would transfer to them (Cardenas et al, 2014).…”

Giving peace a chance: Lessons from translational research in Colombia.

“…Innovation in peacebuilding has left brain and behavioral science largely unexplored (Bernstein & Barsa, 2021). Today, special attention is being given to the microfoundations of the aggregated phenomena studied under the ample category of transitions from war to peace (Cárdenas et al, 2014). Using an evidence-based understanding of how people actually behave, make decisions and respond to programs, policies, and incentives, brain and behavioral sciences complement traditional approaches to diplomacy, negotiation, mediation, peacebuilding, climate security or women's peace, and security (United Nations, 2019).…”