Investing in Authoritarian Rule

Punishment and Patronage in Rwanda's Gacaca Courts for Genocide Crimes

Anuradha Chakravarty

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN:
  9781107084087
• eBook ISBN:
  9781316028759
• Topic: Law
• Subtopic: Criminal Law
• Index: Law

This book shows how Rwanda's transitional courts that tried genocide crimes - the gacaca - produced social complicity and cemented authoritarian rule. It is unique for its in-depth investigation of the courts' legal operations: confessions, denunciation, and lay judging, and shows how targeted incentives such as grants of clemency, opportunities for private gain, and career advancement drew the masses into the orbit of the ethnic minority-dominated regime. Using previously untapped data, it illustrates how a decade of mass trials constructed a tacit patronage-driven relationship in which the interests of the citizenry became tied to the authoritarian elite that had discretionary power to grant or withdraw those benefits at will. The operation of law in individual behavior and authoritarian control presented in this volume will be of use to students and scholars in the social sciences, and practitioners interested in criminal law and transitional justice.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title
• Series information
• Title page
• Copyright information
• Dedication
• Table of contents
• List of tables
• List of figures
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part I Clientelist and Authoritarian Legacies
• Part II Formal and Informal Rules of the Game
• Part III Consolidating Authoritarianism
• Conclusion
• Glossary of Recurring Terms
• Appendix A: Offers of Clemency by the State
• Appendix B: Basic Overview of Prison and Community Samples
• Appendix C: Sample Selection
• Bibliography
• Index