Foreign Pressure and the Politics of Autocratic Survival

Abel Escribà-Folch and Joseph Wright

https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198746997.001.0001
Published: 2015 Online ISBN: 9780191809262 Print ISBN: 9780198746997

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CHAPTER

7 Do Human Rights Prosecutions Destabilize Dictatorships?


Abel Escribà-Folch, Joseph Wright

https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198746997.003.0007 Pages 184–210

Published: September 2015

Abstract
This chapter examines whether human rights prosecutions in transition countries deter dictatorships
in other countries from relinquishing power. Two approaches are discussed. The optimistic view
claims that prosecutions not only restore justice but also deter other regimes from abusing human
rights. The pessimistic view argues that prosecutions increase the incumbent elites’ expected
likelihood of being punished if they lose o ce and thus deter dictators from leaving power. The
chapter argues that the in uence of human rights prosecutions should vary by whether the incumbent
regime has institutionalized post-exit domestic guarantees. The evidence shows that human rights
prosecutions in neighboring countries only deter personalist dictatorships from relinquishing o ce
because these rulers are the least likely to have strong domestic guarantees of a safe haven once their
time in power ends. The chapter illustrates this argument with a case study of the regime collapse in
Libya and Yemen during the Arab Spring.

Keywords: prosecutions, human rights, exit guarantees, post-exit punishment, exile, personalist regimes,
Libya, Yemen
Subject: Comparative Politics
Collection: Oxford Scholarship Online

In March 2009, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for Sudanese President
1
Omar Hassan al-Bashir for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Two years later, in the midst of civil
rebellion in Libya, a rare bout of consensus at the U.N. Security Council (UNSC) prompted the ICC to issue
arrest warrants for President Muammar Gadda , one of his sons, and another key regime leader.

The origins of the ICC date from the United Nations War Crimes Commission (UNWCC), established in 1943
to investigate Nazi war crimes during the Second World War. The UNWCC aided domestic tribunals in
member states in their e orts to pursue prosecutions, and helped develop the concept of international
 crimes, including crimes against peace and humanity, and the crime of genocide. By 1948, the UNWCC had
supported domestic tribunals in conducting nearly 3500 trials, resulting in over 2800 prosecutions (Plesch,
2011, 102).

Although the ICC did not issue its rst indictment until 2005, a growing number of ex-dictators faced
criminal prosecutions in domestic and international courts in the past three decades (Roht-Arriaza, 2005;
Lutz and Reiger, 2009; Kim and Sikkink, 2010). News media have not been shy about showing footage of
“famous” dictators such as Slobodan Milošević, Hosni Mubarak, and Charles Taylor sitting in a courtroom
to face charges of crimes against humanity or violations of human rights. Further, media regularly report
new human rights cases in which transition countries revisit their authoritarian past to bring those

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responsible of rights violations to justice. In Romania, for example, former members of the Communist
p. 185 security apparatus are starting to face charges more than twenty years after the ouster and execution of
2
Ceaușescu. O cers and ex-dictators responsible for human rights violations during military rule in Brazil
3
and Guatemala have also recently been sent to court for crimes committed nearly thirty years prior.

Proponents of campaigns to prosecute human rights abuses hailed these events as key advancements for
4
human rights and global justice. The optimistic view of prosecutions argues that they promote democratic
consolidation and raise the cost of repression, thus deterring other regimes from abusing human rights
5
(Kim and Sikkink, 2010; Olsen et al., 2010). As Sikkink clearly puts it, “[t]he possibility of punishment and
6
disgrace makes violating human rights more costly, and thus deters future leaders from doing so.” Former
U.N. Secretary General Ko Annan also emphasized this point during the International Conference on
Financing for Development in 2002:

Our hope is that, by punishing the guilty, the ICC will bring some comfort to the surviving victims
and to the communities that have been targeted. More important, we hope it will deter future war
criminals, and bring nearer the day when no ruler, no State, no junta and no army anywhere will be
able to abuse human rights with impunity.

7
Prosecution of dictators and the growing in uence of the ICC are not without critics though. Some note that
the ICC has insu cient enforcement capacity to induce better behavior (Goldsmith, 2003), while others
stress that autocratic regimes sign human rights treaties for strategic reasons, but with little intention of
8
complying (Vreeland, 2008; Hollyer and Rosendor , 2011). Snyder and Vinjamuri (2004) argue that
prosecuting human rights abusers involved in a con ict may provide a perverse incentive to continue
9
ghting to avoid punishment.

p. 186 This logic points to a more far-reaching criticism: prosecutions may deter repressive regimes from
relinquishing power (Goldsmith, 2003; Goldsmith and Krasner, 2003; Sutter, 1995, 2006). If prosecutions
deter human rights abuses in transition countries, the proximate cause is that prosecutions raise the cost of
using repression by increasing the likelihood of punishment after o ce (↑ q). For example, in reporting on
Mubarak’s trial, the late Anthony Shadid noted that, “[s]ome Arab o cials even suggested that the
spectacle of the trial on Wednesday—a president and his family, along with his retinue of o cials, facing
10
charges—would make [other]…leaders all the more reluctant to step down.” For this reason, according to
a more pessimistic view, prosecutions might also increase the cost of leaving power for elites in autocratic
regimes that have committed human rights abuses by increasing the chances they are punished after
stepping down. However, as Sikkink and Walling (2007, 429) point out, “there are many claims about the
negative e ects of trials but relatively little solid evidence to support them.”

Attempts to prosecute human rights abuses have become a new tool of external pressure, even debated as a
11
strategy to put pressure on the Syrian regime in the aftermath of the Arab Spring uprisings. However,
given the paucity of ICC indictments to date, much less successful prosecution, there is little room to assess
how ICC actions in uence the behavior of repressive dictatorships. In contrast, the number of human rights
 prosecutions in domestic and international courts has risen signi cantly in the past thirty years (see Figure
1.4).

In this chapter, we use the number of prosecutions in neighboring countries as a proxy for changes in the
autocrats’ expectation about the likelihood of post-transition punishment. This allows us to assess whether
the “accountability era,” measured by the growing number of prosecutions across the globe, deters
dictatorships from giving up power. Prosecution of human rights violations principally in uences regime
elites’ incentive to step down from power when faced with a crisis. Rather than weakening regimes by
undermining their capacity to obtain loyalty or repress, we posit that prosecutions alter elites’ expected
utility of stepping down.

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Because the institutional mechanisms for protecting elite power after a transition vary across di erent
types of dictatorships, we expect the in uence of prosecutions to vary as well. In military regimes, for
p. 187 example, o cers can threaten a coup if the new democracy encroaches on their interests. In party-based
dictatorships, the dominant party frequently competes in and sometimes wins elections after a transition.
These mechanisms for domestically—and credibly—protecting power after a transition mean prosecutions
should be less likely to deter transitions in these regimes. In personalist autocracies, however, regime
collapse and transition typically mean the old elites lose power and lack the institutional capacity to protect
their interests after a transition. Personalist elites are thus more likely to be punished unless they can nd
foreign protection in the form of asylum. Prosecutions should therefore increase the likelihood of
punishment but also make it more di cult to nd a credible asylum o er. As a result, prosecutions reduce
the expected utility of stepping down, so the evidence for the pessimistic view of human rights prosecutions
should be strongest in personalist dictatorships.

Punishment Expectations and Transitions

Regime transitions result from destabilizing domestic conditions and expectations about the ex-post
consequences of leaving power. Foreign policy instruments not only destabilize autocracies by limiting the
regime’s capacity to buy support or by undermining its coercive capacity, but can also alter expectations of
post-transition punishment (q in our model). Given a domestic or external shock that decreases the bene ts
of resisting in power, the ability of elites to protect their interests in a subsequent regime—be it democracy
or new dictatorship—in uences their willingness to negotiate a transition and relinquish power. Despite
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receiving considerable theoretical attention, this claim has not been systematically tested.

Our model of regime change illustrates how expectations of post-transition punishment in uence
transitions. A peaceful democratic transition is more likely when the regime faces a credible possibility of
rebellion (due to a decrease in p) plus a su ciently low probability of experiencing a bad post-exit fate
should regime elites decide to step down. In other words, peaceful democratic transitions mostly occur
when elites’ expected utility of stepping down is greater than that of resisting in power.

However, promises to grant domestic immunity to former elites are not credible if a new democratic
government has an incentive to punish former autocratic elites and these elites lack the capacity to protect
p. 188 themselves (Sutter, 1995). Two features of autocratic rule can ameliorate this credibility problem by
ensuring the new government upholds a transition agreement after the autocratic elite relinquish their
monopoly on power. Political parties representing the interests of former autocratic elites can win electoral
power and veto revisions to transition agreements; and former elites in the military can credibly threaten to
replace the new democratic government in a coup bid. Elites in dominant party dictatorships, we posit, are
the most likely to have strong party representation after a transition; while elites in the military regimes,
should have the most capacity to credibly threaten a coup. Elites in both types of dictatorships, therefore,
should be better placed to successfully negotiate a peaceful transition than rulers in personalist regimes.
 If domestic protection cannot be enforced, an alternative course to alleviate the punishment dilemma is to
seek foreign protection in exile (Sutter, 1995). However, the exile “solution” hinges on two increasingly
di cult conditions. First, exiled elites must nd a country willing to host them. Second, the risk the host
country revokes protection to enable either extradition or prosecution by a foreign court must be
su ciently low so that the bene ts of eeing are greater than those of ghting to stay in power.

Factors that increase the expectation that regime elites will be punished after a transition or will be unable
to nd asylum in a foreign country should lower the chances that the regime negotiates an exit, making a
peaceful transition less likely. Because new democracy is less likely to emerge after forced or violent
autocratic regime collapse (Figure 2.3), changes in post-exit punishment expectations have implications for

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the prospects of democracy. Thus, if prosecutions of human rights abusers in neighboring countries are a
useful empirical proxy for changes in the expectation of post-exit punishment (q), these prosecutions
should deter some dictatorships from transitioning to democracy.

This logic informs one of the two competing views of human rights prosecutions, each of which points to
di erent policy prescriptions for addressing past human rights abuses (Olsen et al., 2010). While the
pessimistic view argues that these strategic considerations about the likelihood of punishment after leaving
power deter leaders from stepping down, the optimistic view, which focuses on transition countries, claims
that prosecutions deter repression by making such behavior more costly to the perpetrators. We discuss
both views in turn.

The Pessimistic View

Some early theories of democratic transition identify prosecutions for past abuses as a potential obstacle to
democratization. Dix (1982), for example, emphasizes that exit guarantees for former ruling elites increase
p. 189 the chances of successful transition, while O’Donnell and Schmitter (1986) argue that past repression
under military rule hinders “pacted” transitions to democracy. Further, if the military remains strong and
cohesive, a democracy with some guarantees of the military’s interests—including immunity from
prosecution—can facilitate extrication from autocratic rule (Przeworski, 1991).

Consistent with the logic of our model, these arguments suggest that the anticipation of likely punishment
after transition reduces the probability that autocratic elites relinquish power through a negotiated process.
Indeed, in his “guidelines for democratizers,” Huntington urges new democratic politicians to refrain from
prosecuting former elites for human rights violations (Huntington, 1991b). This reasoning informed
decisions to pass amnesty laws during transitions in countries such as Argentina, Uruguay, and Spain
(Kritz, 1995).

Concern that prosecutions will deter repressive leaders from leaving power also informs critics of the ICC.
Some argue that the growing reach of the ICC will prompt dictators to hold onto power (Goldsmith, 2003;
Goldsmith and Krasner, 2003; Snyder and Vinjamuri, 2004; Nalepa and Powell, 2011). Ginsburg (2009, 499),
for example, suggests that the ICC may take “away states’ ability to commit to non-prosecution in the case
of amnesties.” Recent indictments of sitting rulers in countries such as Libya and Sudan have further fueled
this debate because these actions targeted individuals who were concurrently facing pressure to step down
peacefully. Commenting on the Syrian case, one expert argued that a criminal investigation would make
13
Assad more reluctant to reach a diplomatic solution through U.N. talks. In short, the pessimistic view
emphasizes that unless some mechanism exists to credibly prevent new elites from punishing former
autocratic elites, a peaceful, negotiated democratic transition is unlikely.

However, elites in some dictatorships, particularly those with an organizational basis, possess
institutionalized mechanisms for retaining some domestic power even after democratization. The extent to
which autocratic elites expect their power to be protected after transition, in turn, shapes their beliefs about
 the likelihood of post-transition punishment, q. Therefore, in dictatorships where elites can expect to retain
some post-transition power, the pessimistic logic should be weaker.

Military regimes are dictatorships where the military as an institution rules and thus constrains the power
of the nominal leader. For these regimes, the capacity to make credible transition pacts stems from their
p. 190 advantage in violence. Exit guarantees are credible because the military retains the capacity to re-
intervene in politics if the new political elites encroach upon their interests. As O’Donnell and Schmitter
(1986, 29) point out, “[w]here they cannot prevent the transition, they will strive to obtain iron-clad
guarantees that under no circumstances will ‘the past be unearthed’; failing to obtain that, they will remain
a serious threat to the nascent democracy.” In Argentina, for example, the prosecution of former junta

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leaders prompted military unrest and a coup threat, forcing Alfonsín’s government to pass immunity laws
shortly after the transition (Nobles, 2010). Similarly, during Brazil’s transition, the military eliminated
“most of the proposed constitutional clauses that would have curtailed military autonomy” (Linz and
Stepan, 1996, 169).

The military’s willingness to bargain indicates they can credibly threaten to re-intervene once out of power,
and are thus more likely than other autocratic elites to return power to civilians through a “pacted”
transition (Sutter, 1995). A credible threat to dislodge a new government is su cient to induce the
opposition to refrain from revising the past, which lowers the expected probability of punishment (q).
Indeed, many argue that a central reason militaries intervene in politics in the rst place is to protect their
corporate interests, particularly immunity from prosecution (Thompson, 1975; Nordlinger, 1977).

Dominant party dictatorships also frequently end in negotiated transitions, with the regime party
competing in post-transition multiparty elections (Huntington, 1991b; Ishiyama, 1995; Geddes, 1999). Thus
the dominant party can act as a veto player after a transition, much like the military does in many new
democracies that follow military rule. Dominant party autocracies typically have cohesive cadres and
relatively broad and diverse support coalitions (Geddes, 1999; Smith, 2005; Magaloni, 2008). They also buy
mass support through broad patronage networks, distributing bene ts and public employment by
politicizing public resources (Magaloni, 2006; Greene, 2010). Such features allow party elites to mobilize
support and increase their power vis-à-vis the opposition during bargaining over electoral rules of a new
democracy (Albertus and Menaldo, 2014). Indeed, former dominant regime parties have generally won at
least the second largest share of seats in the legislature in post-transition democracies, with some former
dominant parties even retaking legislative majorities or the executive (see Chapter 4). Consequently, these
elites are likely to retain post-transition political leverage.

If elites from a former party dictatorship win some legislative power, they can block a new democratic
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government’s policy choices that renege on previous promises and lead to punishment. An example from
p. 191 post-Communist transitions in Eastern Europe illustrates this point. David (2003) compares the timing
and scope of lustration laws after transitions in Poland and Czechoslovakia to show that, in the former,
these laws were limited and passed more than a decade after the transition because the negotiated
transition allowed some former communists to retain power. The rst Polish elections in 1989 were only
partly competitive, with just one-third of parliamentary seats contested, and the regime leader Jaruzelski
remained president until 1990. The Democratic Left Alliance (SLD), controlled by former Communists and
opposed to lustration, collected the second largest vote total in the 1991 legislative election, and won the
1993 parliamentary and 1995 presidential elections. This prevented a pro-lustration legislative majority
from forming, forestalling the passage of lustration laws until the victory of the center-right in 1997. In
post-Arab Spring Tunisia, the second post-transition election was won by a party, Nidaa Tounes, which
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includes former elites and members of Ben Ali’s political party (RCD).

Personalist dictatorships stand apart from those based on an institutionalized organization such as a party
or the military because leaders in these regimes typically have near-complete control over decision-making
 and political appointments (Geddes, 1999). By de nition, these rulers weaken the two institutions, the party
and the military, that not only constrain them in the present but, at the same time, are those most capable
of defending their interests in the future, should they leave power.

Personalist dictators often undermine the collective action capacity of their militaries to reduce the risk of
coups. Coup-proo ng strategies—such as personally controlling internal promotion and recruitment, using
ethnic or familial criteria for o cer selection, and creating parallel security organizations—ensure loyalty
but do so at the expense of weakening the institutional structure of the armed forces (Quinlivan, 1999;
Belkin and Schofer, 2003; Ezrow and Frantz, 2011a; Pilster and Böhmelt, 2011). By personalizing the
military, these leaders rarely have allies within the military once they leave power because losing power

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means their key supporters in the military have lost power as well.

Likewise, while legislatures and parties typically help enforce power-sharing agreements and policy
concessions (Gandhi, 2008; Magaloni, 2008; Boix and Svolik, 2013), the logic of patrimonialism often
p. 192 renders these institutions instruments of patronage, rotation, and control in personalist regimes (Lust-
Okar, 2005; Wright, 2008). Appointments provide access to rents and other bene ts, but those selected may
be subject to frequent rotation to prevent the creation of independent power bases. Parties in these regimes
are frequently the creation of the leader and often do not survive him. The support parties in Mobutu’s and
Trujillo’s regimes, for example, disintegrated once their leaders lost power. Gadda did not have a party
and, relying partly on mercenaries, left no military structure behind, save tribal militias, when his regime
fell.

With alienated militaries and weak parties, personalist rulers have less capacity to threaten new elites and
thus retain leverage after a transition. For these rulers, retaining power may be the best protection against
punishment. Thus, historically, personalist dictators have faced a worse fate when their regime is ousted, as
Figure 3.2 illustrates (Escribà-Folch, 2013a).

Consider the case of Malawi. In contrast to Rawlings’ regime in Ghana, Malawi’s long-time leader, Hastings
Banda, systematically weakened existing regime institutions—the legislature and the regime party—to
consolidate personal power (Posner, 1995). Further, rather than mobilizing a broad coalition, Banda’s
support was drawn primarily from his own ethnic group, the Chewa, and those living in the central regions
of Malawi. To reduce his reliance on the military and protect himself from a coup, Banda created a
paramilitary group, the Malawi Young Pioneers, to repress dissent. After donors cut aid in the early 1990s,
Banda conceded and held a referendum on his regime in 1993. Banda lost: nearly two-thirds of voters
supported the adoption of free multiparty elections. In the 1994 general election, the rst after the
transition, Banda’s party placed second, and he was defeated in the presidential contest. The following year
Banda was placed under house arrest and tried—along with some of his aides—for killing political
adversaries. The new government also investigated the former dictator’s nancial assets, later charging
him with fraud. This example illustrates a personalist dictator’s inability to secure domestic protection after
stepping down. He clearly miscalculated, and without post-transition protections, was quickly punished by
the new democratic government.

Alternatively, granting of asylum to outgoing dictators may serve to alleviate the “punishment dilemma”
when domestic protection is unlikely. Indeed, historically exile has been a common fate of personalist rulers
(see Figure 3.2). In the absence of domestic guarantees, foreign protection can facilitate democratic
16
p. 193 transitions even in personalist regimes. Democratic governments have often played an active role in
making foreign protection credible and thus inducing rulers to step down. In some cases they contribute to
broker peace agreements, such as in Ethiopia and Liberia. In the case of Liberia, Charles Taylor was o ered
asylum in Nigeria in exchange for stepping down. Democracies can also grant direct asylum to expedite
transitions before domestic tension escalates or armed con ict erupts. For example, former Presidents
Ferdinand Marcos (Philippines) and Singman Rhee (South Korea) both went to Hawaii (U.S.); Peru’s
 Fujimori announced his resignation once he was already in Japan; and Haiti’s Aristide was welcomed in
South Africa in 2004.

Nevertheless, as we argue in Chapter 3, growing international pressure to prosecute human rights abuses
not only increases the expectation that post-exit punishment is more likely at home, but also reduces
dictators’ options for asylum in foreign countries by increasing the likelihood that they will be extradited to
face trial or punished by international or mixed courts.

In the past three plus decades human rights groups have gained more tools for holding past abusers
accountable, including increasing involvement and support from international organizations and other

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states. For instance, since 1999 the U.N. forbids the promise of amnesties for the most serious crimes—
genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and gross violations of human rights—in any United
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Nations-endorsed peace agreement. Some countries have also invoked universal jurisdiction to prosecute
former dictators and other state o cials living in their home countries. This puts pressure on domestic
institutions, which, without such pressure, might be unable or unwilling to prosecute. For example,
Argentine courts recently demanded extradition for those responsible for the crimes that occurred during
18
the Francoist dictatorship in Spain. Domestic obstacles to criminal accountability can also be overcome
with the establishment of hybrid or international courts supported by the international community, such as
the Special Court for Sierra Leone or the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.

The development of a comprehensive international human rights regime, particularly new enforcement
mechanisms, makes exile an increasingly unattractive option (Gilligan, 2006; Chapman and Chaudoin,
2013). The risk of punishment in exile has increased not only because it is now more di cult for ex-
dictators to nd a country willing to host them in exile, but a substantial number of countries are also now
p. 194 parties to the ICC (122 in 2014) and many invoke universal jurisdiction in attempts to punish dictators
who seek exile. Due to increased media and popular pressure, democratic countries are now unwilling or
unable to host eeing dictators as they had often done. At most, they can now contribute to brokering
agreements and nding safe havens in third—especially, non-signatory—states. For example, despite
attempts by numerous countries, including the U.S., to help Gadda nd a suitable exile destination, this
option failed to entice him and he instead fought to the death.

Further, even dictators who initially succeeded in obtaining exile now face a growing risk of having their
foreign protection revoked, again resulting in extradition or prosecution in a foreign court. For example, the
former President of Chad Hissène Habré will be tried for human rights abuses in a Senegalese special court
19
despite having lived in exile in Senegal since his ouster in 1990. Similarly, the former President of Liberia
Charles Taylor initially ed to exile in Nigeria in 2003, but three years later the Nigerian authorities, facing
both international and domestic pressure, facilitated his transfer to the Special Court for Sierra Leone. After
a guilty verdict, Taylor was sentenced to fty years in prison.

The growing hostility of the international environment also manifests in the risks faced by former rulers
who, for di erent reasons, decided to temporarily leave their safe havens. For instance, Baltasar Garzón, a
Spanish judge, demanded extradition and tried to prosecute Augusto Pinochet while he was in London in
1998 seeking medical care. A de ant Fujimori, exiled in Japan, made preparations for returning to Peru to
run for president, but Peruvian authorities charged him with numerous crimes. While Japan refused Peru’s
extradition requests, Fujimori was arrested while traveling to Chile in 2006, and was eventually extradited
to Peru and tried for human rights crimes (Burt, 2009). Likewise, when former Haitian President Jean-
Claude Duvalier returned to Haiti in 2010, after over two decades in French exile, human rights groups
demanded that the ex-dictator stand trial for past abuses. Initially, Haitian prosecutors ordered his arrest to
face charges of corruption but subsequently pursued prosecution for crimes against humanity under
20
international law. Duvalier’s death in 2014 put an end to the long-awaited judicial process.
p. 195 Decreasing prospects of happy exile are particularly relevant for elites in personalist dictatorships because
they are less capable of controlling the domestic transition process to negotiate a safe exit and have
historically been the most likely to ee their countries upon ouster. Thus, as the exile option becomes less
attractive, expectations about post-exit punishment—particularly for rulers who lack credible domestic
guarantees in a post- transition setting—should increase. While the growing number of prosecutions may
not alter the bene ts or risks of ghting for survival, prosecutions make resisting look better relative to
stepping down and eeing to exile. This reinforces the logic that prosecutions in neighbor countries should
reduce the likelihood of regime change in personalist regimes. If exile increasingly involves the risk of future
punishment or is infeasible, the expected utility of this option becomes lower than the utility of ghting to
retain power.

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In sum, the logic of the pessimistic view should be strongest in personalist dictatorships because they have
few domestic mechanisms for obtaining credible protection of their interests and safety after a transition.
This should make these regimes more sensitive to changes in externally generated costs of leaving power
(growing pressure to prosecute proxied by neighbor human rights prosecutions). By increasing the expected
likelihood of post-transition punishment (↑ q)—and reducing the prospects of a happy exile—prosecutions
in neighbor countries should reduce the probability of personalist regimes leaving power.

The Optimistic View

Proponents of human rights prosecutions argue that by improving accountability, establishing rule of law,
and, thus raising the cost of repression, punishment can deter future abuses (Olsen et al., 2010). The
increasing legalization of human rights regimes and the recent growth of international agreements obliging
states to address human rights abuses have accompanied a steady rise in prosecutions (Méndez, 1997; Lutz
and Sikkink, 2001; Sikkink and Walling, 2007; Kim and Sikkink, 2010; Sikkink, 2011). The potential costs
associated with punishment are not only material (freedom and income), but also social (Kim and Sikkink,
2010). Aware of the increased probability of prosecution, proponents argue, state o cials should refrain
from violating human rights to avoid punishment. Indeed, the threat of prosecutions may deter human
rights abuses even in the absence of reliable enforcement mechanisms (Ritter and Wolford, 2012).

Recent evidence that human rights prosecutions in transition countries reduce state repression supports the
p. 196 optimistic view (Kim and Sikkink, 2010; Olsen et al., 2010). Further, deterrence may extend to
neighboring countries: transitional states reduce repression when their neighbors prosecute past abusers.
Evidence from Latin America suggests that human rights trials improved respect for human rights and
democratic accountability (Sikkink and Walling, 2007), while others show that trials combined with other
forms of transitional justice serve to further democracy and human rights (Olsen et al., 2010).

The optimistic view focuses on how prosecutions in uence repression in countries that have already
transitioned from autocracy, not immediate decisions of sitting rulers about whether to negotiate an exit
from power. However, if prosecutions make the use of repression more costly in the future, this mechanism
may also in uence the prospects for political survival in some regimes. First, public knowledge of costly
repression can signal to the opposition that the regime is less capable of suppressing dissent and thus spur
anti-regime mobilization. Second, prosecutions may increase the likelihood that the repressive apparatus
refuses to use violence against regime dissenters. Thus the likelihood that a dictator can successfully defend
against violent threats to his rule when they arise—which increases the prospect that he ends up killed or
jailed—decreases (↓ R).

If prosecutions raise the long-term cost of repression for the regime, then when a regime chooses to hold
onto power instead of negotiating an exit, there is some probability that the regime successfully ghts for
survival and retains power (p in our setting). Yet, with some probability the regime may be forcibly ousted
 and thus elites face a higher risk of a nasty post-exit fate (Goemans, 2008; Escribà-Folch, 2013a). If, by
emboldening the opposition or reducing security forces’ willingness to repress, human rights prosecutions
decrease the regime’s capacity to resist, the expected utility of staying in power decreases as well.

Autocratic elites may thus face a dilemma. On the one hand, they can decide to stay in o ce, but at the risk
of being less capable of handling dissent in the future, which reduces the expected utility of resisting.
Alternatively, they may opt to step down in the current period provided they are able to negotiate with
opposition forces and ensure a relatively benign fate after democratic transition. Prosecutions may
therefore increase the likelihood that regime elites negotiate a peaceful exit from power provided the
likelihood of being punished is su ciently low. Again, this prediction should vary with regime type.

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Leaders in personalist dictatorships usually have more control over the selection of high-level military and
security o cers, and are more likely to personally command these organizations (Geddes, 1999; Weeks,
2012, 2014). Control over the military allows the dictator to sta these organizations using familial, ethnic,
p. 197 or sectarian loyalties, making them more dependent on a speci c autocratic ruler remaining in o ce.
Such strategies may strengthen the loyalty of the security apparatus, reduce the likelihood of defections,
and facilitate the regime’s repressive response to challengers.

Alternatively, in non-personalist regimes military and security forces are often less patrimonialized and
more highly institutionalized. These organizations tend to be, as Bellin (2004, 145) argues, “rule-governed,
predictable, and meritocratic,” with “established paths of career advancement and recruitment.” Thus the
leaders of the coercive apparatus in these dictatorships are less likely to be tied to the regime leader and
more likely to survive in their position should the regime fall. In Chile, for example, the leader of the
military junta that democratized in 1989 not only retained his status as a general but continued for nearly a
decade as the head of the armed forces.

When faced with anti-regime uprisings, the regime’s survival often depends on whether the military and
security forces use their violent capacity to repress opponents (Bellin, 2004; Stephan and Chenoweth, 2008;
Svolik, 2011). Yet, as Bellin notes, institutionalization “determines the degree to which the military elite is
personally invested in the regime’s survival” (Bellin, 2012, 132). O cers in an institutionalized military are
more likely to turn their backs on the regime because they typically have fewer ties to the ruler and a more
developed “corporate identity” linked to defending the state rather than the regime. If prosecutions in
neighboring countries provide a signal that repression is more likely to be punished, the interests of the
military may be better served by defecting rather than by ghting for regime survival. Hence, amid
unfolding unrest, they may refuse to open re.

Recent events during the Arab Spring uprisings illustrate this point. In Tunisia, General Ammar, the army
chief of sta , refused to obey Ben-Ali’s order to shoot protesters, and the dictator soon ed to exile. The
Tunisian military was not highly personalized under Ben-Ali and “in time came to rank among the Arab
world’s most professional forces” (Barany, 2011, 31). In Egypt, the decision to defect took more time, with
the military initially helping other security forces. However, after violence intensi ed, the army announced
its refusal to use force and the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces quickly forced Mubarak to resign.
Egypt’s military is highly institutionalized and their institutional economic interests con icted with
Mubarak’s plan to elevate his son to succeed him (Bellin, 2012). These cases contrast with Libya and Yemen,
where the dictators’ sons held key posts in the regime’s most repressive military divisions (see below,
“Personalism and Leaders’ Post-Transition Fate in Libya and Yemen”).

If growing international protection of human rights and increasing resolve to prosecute violators make
future repression more costly, elites in non-personalist regimes should have an incentive to step down in a
p. 198 controlled transition provided they have institutionalized exit guarantees to make transition agreements
credible. Regime transition may thus be preferable to the uncertainty of ghting for regime survival given a
 reduced capacity to repress. Hence, this variant of the optimistic hypothesis suggests that neighboring
country prosecutions for human rights abuses should be less likely to deter democratic transition in non-
personalist dictatorships. That is, neighbor human rights prosecutions may advance the prospects of
democratization in non-personalist dictatorships.

Measuring Punishment Expectations

Both the pessimistic and optimistic views hinge on elites’ estimates of the likelihood of being punished after
a transition, namely, q, in our model. It is di cult, however, to test this logic because these expectations are
not directly observable. Further, while recent evidence suggests that prosecutions reduce repression (Kim

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and Sikkink, 2010; Olsen et al., 2010), these studies focus on countries that have already transitioned to
democracy and therefore cannot rule out the possibility that unobserved factors in the new democracy cause
both the timing of prosecutions after transition and improvements in human rights. The decision to
prosecute may be endogenous to the political strength of the repressive actors (Skaar, 1999; Kim, 2012).
Thus if countries only prosecute former abusers when the latter are less threatening, we only observe the
bene ts of prosecutions.

To address these issues, we measure changes in elites’ perception of the likelihood of post-transition
punishment with a proxy: the number of human rights prosecutions in neighboring countries that have
already transitioned. This approach assumes that dictators observe prosecutions in proximate countries and
21
expect that the politics of human rights punishment in their own country may be similar.

Elites in dictatorships often use regional organizations and neighboring countries as a reference point for
understanding and responding to political change. For example, Kazakhstan’s Prime Minister Karim
Massimov told Reuters in an interview that his government was “watching very carefully what’s happening
22
in North Africa and the Middle East.” And high-ranking o cers in Pinochet’s regime looked to other
p. 199 Southern Cone military dictatorships (Argentina and Brazil) when searching for constitutional pathways
to permanent rule.

Furthermore, human rights prosecutions often result from the e orts of transnational advocacy networks
that cluster geographically (Keck and Sikkink, 1998; Hafner-Burton and Ron, 2009; Bell et al., 2012). These
transnational networks, in turn, use news media, which can also re ect a regional bias in reporting on
human rights abuses (Hafner-Burton and Ron, 2013). Autocratic elites are therefore likely to be more aware
of and in uenced by regional changes in human rights regimes. This suggests a regional focus to the
relevant reference group for autocratic elites, with implications for human rights politics and transitions
(Brinks and Coppedge, 2006; Hafner-Burton and Ron, 2009).

With this measure of the expectation of post-transition punishment, we examine how the growing number
of human rights prosecutions in uence regime change. Consistent with the logic of the pessimistic view of
prosecutions, our rst hypothesis argues that neighbor human rights prosecutions should decrease the
likelihood of transition, but only in personalist regimes. A second hypothesis, which builds on the optimistic
view, argues that neighbor human rights prosecutions should increase the likelihood of democratic
transition in non-personalist regimes.
 Prosecutions and Regime Change

To test these expectations about prosecutions and regime change, we use data on transitional human rights
prosecutions (HRPs). Kim and Sikkink (2010) code international and domestic HRPs with information from
U.S. Department of State Human Rights Annual Country Reports, international organizations such as the
U.N. Security Council, and human rights NGOs. This data do not include cases from the ICC because the
court’s rst investigation started in June 2004 but concluded in 2012, after the temporal span of the HRP
data. We measure events in neighboring countries that have already experienced transitions, and thus do
not rely on information from dictatorships that are currently in power. Therefore, neighbor prosecutions

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are more likely to be exogenous to the process of democratization than other measures, such as signing
human rights treaties, that rely on information from strategic government behavior in dictatorships at risk
of transition.

The prosecutions measure is a weighted count of the number of HRP’s in neighboring countries in the past
three years. We examine data from 1975 to 2006 because prosecutions only begin in the late 1970s (see
p. 200 Chapter 1). To de ne neighbor countries, we calculate a weighted index using minimum distance data
from Gleditsch and Ward (2006). We assign a weight equal to the inverse distance from the target
(w=1/ln(d)) for neighboring countries within a 50 km of threshold of minimum ∈distance. The weight
decreases for each group of countries at the next distance threshold, where each threshold is an additional
50 km in minimum distance. This weighted measure incorporates information from all neighbors within
1000 km of minimum distance:

20

wH RP i = ∑ ∑ w iK N k
K=1 k∈K

where N is the number of HRPs in the k neighboring countries within the group of countries that fall within
each distance threshold K. w = 1/ln (d) is the weight assigned to the count of all HRPs (Nk) for the countries
23
in K group.

The number of HRPs increased substantially over the past three decades, and this period coincides with the
third wave of democratization. Therefore, we account for unmeasured factors that also increase over time
and may be correlated with regime failure, particularly democratic di usion processes. Further, both
neighboring country HRPs and the political processes that shape the prospects for democratization cluster
geographically, which is not surprising since the prosecutions data code political events that occur only
after a country has transitioned from civil war or autocratic rule, with the majority occurring after a
democratic transition. Because of this geographic clustering, we cannot rely on cross-sectional variation to
estimate the in uence of HRPs. Finally, there may be unobserved factors that vary by country (or
geographic region)—such as the strength of civil society groups, human rights norms, and the political
strength of the military—which are correlated with both the chances of democratization and the prospects
of regional human rights prosecutions. For these reasons, we opt for a model speci cation that incorporates
country- and time period- xed e ects.

We test a model that includes four control variables: neighbor democratization, neighbor post-civil war,
24
p. 201 GDP per capita, and population size. Neighbor democratization is a count of the number of neighboring
countries that democratized in the past three years, and neighbor post-civil war is a count of the number of
neighboring countries that experienced a post-civil war transition in the past three years. Both measures
use a binary cut-point (4000 km distance between capital cities) to delineate neighbors. These variables
capture di usion processes that are correlated with both democratization and neighbor human rights
prosecutions. We also control for GDP per capita and population (both logged and lagged) because these
 structural features proxy for international political strength that may in uence both the prospects of
regime change as well as the likelihood of prosecution.

We rst test a conditional logit with time period- xed e ects and duration time polynomials to account for
time dependence. We include a binary indicator of personalist regime and test models with the interaction
between HRPs and personalist regime. We also report results from linear probability models with country-
and year- xed e ects. We report clustered standard errors throughout. As in prior chapters, we examine
three dependent variables: all regime failures, democratic transitions, and autocratic transitions.

Results

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The rst set of tests group all regime failures together. Overall, HRPs are not strongly correlated with
regime failure, but once we interact HRPs with Personalist regime, we nd that HRPs are associated with a
lower probability of democratic transition in personalist dictatorships, but a higher probability in other
dictatorships. This result remains in the linear probability model. We nd a similar pattern for both
democratic and autocratic transitions. However, the estimates are not statistically di erent from zero in the
autocratic transition models.

25
Figure 7.1 shows results from linear probability models. An increase in neighbor prosecutions from zero to
one standard deviation above the mean is associated with a 2-percent decline in the probability of
democratic transition in personalist regimes, but a 3-percent increase in other dictatorships. While a
similar pattern holds for autocratic transitions, the nding is not as substantively or statistically
signi cant. However, despite the strong substantive nding for non-personalist dictatorships and
p. 202 democratic transition in the left panel, this result is not robust in all speci cations, particularly when we
alter the way we model the global time trend. In short, the nding for democratic transition is consistent
with the expectation that prosecutions deter personalist dictatorships from relinquishing power peacefully
in a negotiated transition to democracy. Importantly, we nd no evidence that the rise of human rights
prosecutions deter other dictatorships from leaving power. If anything, the results suggest the opposite.

Figure 7.1.

Human rights prosecutions and regime change. The change in the predicted linear probability of democratic and autocratic
transition, by regime type. Years: 1977–2006.
 Robustness Tests
We conduct a number of additional tests. First, to account for region-speci c factors that vary over time but
that we cannot directly measure, such as the political strength of human rights groups or other regionally
clustered aspects of democratic di usion, we estimate speci cations (with linear and non-linear link
functions) that: replace country-and time period- xed e ects with region-speci c time trends (this entails
including region- xed e ects); replace time period e ects with year e ects; replace time e ects with the
global prosecutions trend; and interact the global prosecutions trend with region. In these tests the nding
that neighbor prosecution is associated with a lower probability of democratic transition in personalist
regimes remains robust. The nding in Figure 7.1 for other dictatorships, however, is not robust. Thus, we

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cannot conclude that neighbor human rights prosecutions increase the chance of democracy in non-
p. 203 personalist regimes. Finally, the main result remains when we alter the lag on the prosecutions variable
from a three-year lagged moving average to two or four years.

Personalism and Leadersʼ Post-Transition Fate In Libya and Yemen

The Arab Spring uprisings led to a variety of outcomes that may have seemed di cult to anticipate.
However, once we examine the structure of the regimes that eventually collapsed and the incentives of
political actors, possible explanations emerge.

Popular revolts quickly spread from Tunisia, where protests started in December 2010, to most of the rest of
North Africa and the Middle East. However, to date, autocratic rulers have only been ousted in Tunisia,
Libya, Egypt, and Yemen. In other countries, such as Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, and Morocco, anti-regime
protests triggered cosmetic political concessions, including the resignation or dismissal of top o cials, but
stopped well short of regime change. In other countries, such as Algeria and Saudi Arabia, protesters failed
to mobilize in large numbers. Finally, protests in Syria were met with brutal repression and the con ict
quickly devolved into a deadly civil war.

In the three years since the revolts began, democratic change is still rare in the Middle East and North
Africa. In fact, the only countries to hold democratic, multiparty elections since the uprisings began have
been Egypt and Tunisia. Yet opposition politicians have since been assassinated in Tunisia, while Egypt slid
back to autocratic rule after the military staged a coup that ousted President Mursi in July 2013.

In the cases where uprisings led to regime collapse, another notable di erence emerged: the ousted leaders
experienced very di erent post-exit fates. Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, Tunisia’s president, ed to exile in Saudi
Arabia. In Egypt, Hosni Mubarak initially went into internal “exile,” but was later arrested—along with
other members of his family—to be tried in a domestic court for the deaths of protestors (among other
charges). Muammar Gadda was killed by rebel forces during the Libyan civil war. And Yemen’s President
Ali Abdullah Saleh stepped down from o ce after agreeing to the Gulf Cooperation Council transition plan
which granted him and his family immunity from prosecution.

The following sections examine the two cases in which popular revolt lead directly to the ouster of a
personalist ruler. These examples illustrate how punishment expectations in uenced rulers’ decisions
p. 204 about whether and when to step down peacefully, with implications for how the regime collapsed and
what came next.
 Gaddafiʼs Fate and Forced Regime Change in Libya
After deposing a foreign-backed monarchy in a 1969 coup, Muammar Gadda quickly consolidated
personalist power. Following a failed coup attempt in 1975, he dismantled or marginalized constraining
political institutions, in particular the ruling Revolutionary Command Council. He also disbanded the
regime party, the Arab Socialist Union. Furthermore, as Vandewalle (1998, 88) notes, the 1975 coup
“marked the end of professional and technical criteria for military recruitment and was the beginning of a
steady but noticeable in ux of individual members of Qadha ’s tribe—and later of his family—into
sensitive security and army positions.” Counterbalancing within the security apparatus also took the form
of creating multiple overlapping paramilitary units such as the Revolutionary Guard Corps, the People’s

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militia, and a special military brigade led by his son (Lutterbeck, 2013). These units, especially the rst, were
charged with internal security to reduce Gadda ’s dependence on the military (Gaub, 2013, 229). As Gaub
(2013, 230) explains, the goal was to undermine the military’s organizational capacity: “Gadda proceeded
to weaken precisely those elements of the military which could jeopardize the regime, namely all those
which could provide a platform for collective identity and interests. His targets were hence not only
cohesiveness, but also leadership as well as command and control structure.” Unsurprisingly, the wave of
unrest that started in the eastern city of Benghazi in February 2011—right after Mubarak’s fall in Egypt—
quickly devolved into a violent civil con ict. Gadda ’s paramilitary forces and loyal military units opened
re on protesters, using snipers and airstrikes to crush the rebels and storm entire cities. Protest clashes
rapidly turned into an armed rebellion and spread to other cities, such as Misrata, Bayda, Tobruk, and
Zawiya. The escalation triggered numerous defections from military units less loyal to Gadda , some of
which joined the National Liberation Army.

With weak political institutions unable to protect his family’s interests and facing growing unrest, Gadda
saw a negotiated exit from power as an increasingly remote option. Although his highly patrimonialized
army was divided along tribal lines, the military’s strongest units were led by his family relatives. For
example, one of the best-equipped and well-trained units, the 32nd Brigade, which remained loyal
throughout the war and was initially quite e ective in ghting rebel forces, was headed by Gadda ’s son,
Khamis.

Given loyal military commanders, Gadda ’s orders to respond to the protests with violent repression were
p. 205 more realistic than the similar calls to violence issued by rulers in Egypt and Tunisia. Mubarak and Ben
Ali lacked personally loyal o cers, and as a result, their most lethal military forces stood down when asked
to shoot protesters. Even though military units in Eastern Libya soon defected from the regime and joined
the rebels, Gadda countered by purchasing mercenary power with ample money from stockpiled oil
26
revenues (Gaub, 2013; Lutterbeck, 2013).

Shortly after the uprising began, Gadda found himself in a situation where he had committed crimes
against humanity, was facing an armed opposition more than willing to punish him for past misdeeds, and
was unable to secure a negotiated transition because he lacked the type of political institutions that might
help protect his post-transition interests. Therefore, he chose to ght. In terms of our theoretical model,
the best outcome for Gadda was to ght to preserve his power. Early in the con ict, on February 22,
Gadda made clear his intentions during a televised address to his country: he stated that “I am not going to
leave this land. I will die as a martyr at the end…I shall remain here de ant. Muammar is leader of the
27
revolution until the end of time.” These were the words of a death foretold.
 Gaddafiʼs exit options
Under these circumstances, the only way to avoid the punishment dilemma and negotiate a peaceful
transition is for the dictator to secure asylum in a foreign country (Sutter, 1995). The need for a viable exit
became more urgent in March 2011 when the U.N. Security Council imposed a no- y zone that tipped the
military balance in the rebel’s favor, thus increasing the probability Gadda would be defeated militarily.
NATO forces attacked shortly after the U.N. resolution passed.

At the same time, safe exile was unlikely because in late February the UNSC referred Gadda to the ICC,
which issued arrest warrants against the dictator and two close relatives in June. Thus, although Gadda ’s

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family was linked to early proposals for a peaceful transfer of power that included promises of a secure
exile, in the end Gadda kept ghting because ICC intervention undermined the chances of nding a safe
haven. As Phillippe Sands wrote in The Guardian after the ICC arrest warrant, Gadda “was bound to dig in
28
his heels.”

p. 206 Because a large number of countries had already rati ed the Rome Statute, nding a country willing to host
Gadda was di cult. Even in Africa, where thirty-one countries were already parties to the ICC, few options
were available. Potential hosts had to be found then among non-signatories. Indeed, reports indicate that
29
the U.S., the U.K., and Italy sought a third country that would take Gadda and his family as exiles. In May
of that year, South African President Jacob Zuma—acting as the African Union’s mediator—met with
30
Gadda and, allegedly, attempted to persuade him of the bene ts of exile. However, the possibility of
asylum in a non-signatory state faced several obstacles: some non-signatory countries refused to accept
Gadda , fearing international pressure to extradite him, while others did not o er long-term credible
31
guarantees of protection. Moreover, Gadda ’s past foreign policies had earned him numerous enemies
32
throughout Africa, further reducing his options.

33
One potential exile location emerged in Zimbabwe. Mugabe and Gadda were long-time allies, and
Gadda already owned real state in Harare. Further, there was a precedent: in 1991, the U.S. helped former
34
Ethiopian ruler Mengistu nd asylum in Zimbabwe during the Ethiopian civil war. Nonetheless, Zimbabwe
had one clear disadvantage. While Mugabe might have been interested in hosting Gadda , he could not
guarantee his long-term safety. As one observer noted, “Mugabe is 87, and there is little guarantee that a
35
post-Mugabe Zimbabwe would be safe for the Gadda clan.” Indeed, Mengistu may face this same
problem because he was tried (in his absence) in Ethiopia, found guilty of genocide, and sentenced to death.
Subsequently, Ethiopia requested that Zimbabwe extradite Mengistu, but thus far Mugabe’s regime has
36
refused.

Similarly, the recent trial of another Gadda ally, Charles Taylor, may have in uenced the former’s decision
p. 207 to ght to the end. Gadda had previously granted Taylor asylum in Libya, where Taylor trained in
guerrilla tactics and later created the National Patriotic Front of Liberia, which he then used to invade
Liberia and start a civil war. In negotiations to end the war, Taylor was granted asylum in Nigeria in 2003 in
exchange for stepping down. However, despite exile, the Special Court for Sierra Leone issued an indictment
for him. Three years later, under increasing international and domestic pressure, Nigeria sent Taylor back
to Liberia, where he was sentenced to serve fty years in prison.

Because post-transition punishment for Gadda was likely, he did not leave his country and instead
violently resisted, ghting to retain power until he was shot dead by rebels on October 20, 2011. Though
foreign military intervention was crucial in aiding the rebel victory over Gadda ’s forces, a peaceful
negotiated transition never transpired. Instead, forced regime change led to a contested state in which
decentralized militias hold more power than the nominal government (Gaub, 2013). Libya’s new authorities
are struggling to build a stable state, much less a democracy, and the continued risk of state collapse
37
concerns many observers.
 External Exit Guarantees and Regime Change in Yemen
Events in Yemen largely resembled those in Libya, particularly at the start of the Arab Spring uprisings.
President Ali Abdullah Saleh led a highly personalistic regime with rubber-stamp political institutions and a
patrimonialized army; close relatives and members of his tribe held key security positions (Knights, 2013;
Makara, 2013). Further, “[f]rom the 1980s onwards, Saleh built a range of parallel forces, that, in time, were
brought under the control of his close relatives” (Knights, 2013, 273). For example, Saleh’s son, Ahmed, was
the commander of the elite Republican Guard, and Saleh’s nephew commanded the Central Security
Organization (CSO). Further, Saleh’s political party, the General People’s Congress, which he created in
1982, was largely an instrument for distributing patronage and put few e ective limits on his power (Alley,

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2010). As in the Libyan case, protests led to violent repression, the defection of several high-ranking
o cers and their battalions, and the con ict rapidly escalated.

p. 208 In an attempt to defuse the tension, Saleh sought to buy support and promised he would not run for re-
election in 2013, but such promises fell short (Barany, 2011). In March 2011 the main opposition forces
38
proposed a transition plan to Saleh. The plan stated that Saleh would step down and transfer his powers to
his deputy, a transitional government would be formed, and elections held. Most importantly, the plan also
called for an immediate restructuring of the security forces and for investigating state-led violence during
the uprising. In terms of the logic of our theoretical model, the transition plan opened the door for future
prosecution (q), and sought to undermine Saleh’s capacity to ght in the short term (R) by demanding
security reforms. This initial plan would leave Saleh with few options to protect himself after a transition.

Unsurprisingly, Saleh rejected the transition plan and continued to ght, con dent that his most e ective
security forces would remain loyal. The ensuing violence led a leading general, Ali Mohsen, to defect to the
opposition, taking his troops to side with the rebels (Barany, 2011; Makara, 2013). Yet, most of Saleh’s
security forces remained loyal, as did key tribal militias (Brownlee et al., 2013; Makara, 2013). As in Libya,
the country was on the verge of civil war, although the defecting generals sought to avoid direct clashes with
troops still loyal to Saleh (Knights, 2013).

In early June, Saleh was severely injured in an attack on his presidential palace, forcing him to ee to Saudi
39
Arabia to receive medical treatment. This near-death event may have helped convince Saleh of the
substantial risks of resisting. With Ben Ali on the run, Mubarak under house arrest, and Gadda indicted by
the ICC, Saleh needed a safe exit. However, a negotiated exit plan would require immunity, something the
Yemeni opposition could not credibly guarantee, as the initial transition plan proposed to punish Saleh.
With weak political institutions, the only institutional power Saleh might retain upon leaving o ce would
be the Republican Guard headed by his son.

Afraid that the Yemeni con ict would spill into neighboring countries, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC)
proposed a new transition plan that included provisions to grant Saleh and his family immunity from
40
prosecution in exchange for resignation. However, Saleh initially refused to sign the GCC plan three times.
In the end, he relinquished, but only after witnessing Gadda ’s assassination and with substantial pressure
p. 209 from Saudi Arabia. The involvement of the GCC provided credibility to the domestic protection
guarantees, which Saleh would have been unable to secure had he been defeated by force. In January 2012,
the Yemeni Parliament passed an immunity law that would “cover the 33-year period of Saleh’s presidency
41
and could not be cancelled or appealed.”

Abd Rabbuh Mansur Al-Hadi, Saleh’s vice-president, was the sole candidate in the February 2012 elections.
42
In December 2012, Hadi restructured the armed forces, seeking to get rid of Saleh’s loyalists. However,
despite the removal of numerous of Saleh’s relatives, his close relatives remained in control of special units
such as the Republican Guard and the CSO (Knights, 2013). The decision to reform the security forces was
resisted violently and lead to further clashes. Saleh’s son, Ahmed, was eventually appointed ambassador to
 43
the United Arab Emirates. A National Dialogue Conference was launched in March 2013 aimed at drafting a
new constitution. Though Hadi’s government has largely jettisoned the Saleh family from its ranks, the
Yemeni transition still has many challenges ahead. Two year after assuming o ce, Hadi would ee to exile
in Saudi Arabia as Houthi rebels, allied with remnants of the Yemeni army still loyal to Saleh, captured
Sanaa. As in Libya, the risks of state collapse remain.

Discussion

This chapter assesses whether prosecution of human rights abuses deters dictatorships from leaving power.

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We argue that the in uence of human rights prosecutions should vary by whether the incumbent regime has
institutionalized post-exit domestic guarantees. In autocracies where former elites are more likely to have
credible guarantees of their interests—including protections from prosecution—we expect externally
generated increases in the probability of punishment to have little deterrent e ect. However, in
dictatorships that lack a strong ruling party or institutionalized military that can preserve post-transition
leverage, we expect human rights prosecutions to deter dictators from giving up power by increasing the
expected utility of resisting and ghting for survival.

Consistent with this logic, the evidence in this chapter shows that the in uence of human rights
p. 210 prosecutions varies by regime type and is the strongest for personalist dictatorships. As was the case with
sanctions, personalist dictatorships are most a ected by human rights prosecutions in neighbor countries.
In contrast to sanctions, however, the evidence suggests that prosecutions deter these regimes from
relinquishing power, particularly in peaceful democratic transitions.

At rst glance, our results for human rights prosecutions might appear to be at odds with the nding that
these prosecutions reduce repression in transition countries (Kim and Sikkink, 2010). The reason
underlying both, however, may be the same: human rights prosecutions increase the costs of repression.
These ndings can be reconciled once we consider the time inconsistency problem in the optimal treatment
of dictators (Sutter, 1995, 126). Ideally, we would like to punish dictators severely to deter future repression.
Kim and Sikkink provide evidence consistent with this logic, warranting some optimism for the future of
international campaigns to prosecute repressive dictators.

However, we would also like dictators to leave power peacefully, preferably with a transition leading to
democracy. Credible guarantees of immunity may be the best way to lower the cost of leaving power,
thereby inducing departure. Elites in personalist dictatorships are the least likely to have institutional
guarantees of their interests once they leave power, an intuition we document in Chapter 3 with data on the
post-exit fate of dictators. For regimes that have already committed human rights abuses, the costs of
repression are sunk; they cannot undo them once the international climate changes and begins punishing
ex-dictators. For these rulers, prosecutions in other countries simply raise the costs of exit. That the
evidence is strongest for personalist dictators suggests exit guarantees may be the link between observing
ex-dictators being punished and clinging to power. These autocrats do not have institutional guarantees—
either a strong party or threatening military—to ensure a safe post-exit fate. Prosecution of their colleagues
may only make them view retirement or exile all the more dimly.

While we cannot systematically examine ICC prosecutions, since it handed down its rst sentence in 2012,
the evidence in this chapter nonetheless has implications for how this court operates. If indictments against
repressive dictators work in a manner similar to transitional human rights prosecutions, then our ndings
indicate that some of the ICC’s critics have a point. One pathway through which the ICC could harm human
rights is by prolonging the rule of dictators—albeit those governing personalist regimes. The next step in
this research is to examine how prosecutions in uence repression in countries that have not experienced
transitions—a group that includes most dictatorships.
Notes

1 The U.N. Security Council referred Sudan to the ICC in March 2005. Al-Bashir was formally indicted in July 2008 when the
ICC requested a warrant for his arrest, but the warrant was not issued until March 2009.
2 Andrew Higgins, “In Trial, Romania Warily Revisits a Brutal Past,” The New York Times, 29 September 2013.
3 “Brazil to charge army o icer over military rule abuses,” BBC News, 14 March 2012; and “Guatemala Ríos Montt genocide
trial to resume in 2015,” BBC News, 6 November 2013.
4 See, for example, Stanton (2009), and the deputy director Amnesty Internationalʼs Africa program, quoted in Xan Rice,
“Sudanese president Bashir charged with Darfur war crimes,” The Guardian, 4 March 2009. See also: “ICC: Bashir Warrant Is
Warning to Abusive Leaders,” Human Rights Watch, 3 February 2010.

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5 For an approach advocating prosecutions based on legal arguments see, for example, Orentlicher (1991).
6 Kathryn Sikkink, “Making Tyrants Do Time,” op-ed in The New York Times, 15 September 2011.
7 See Osiel (2000) for a review.
8 On why countries join the ICC, see Simmons and Danner (2010) and Chapman and Chaudoin (2013).
9 In contrast, Gilligan (2006) posits that leaders with a high probability of being deposed may be more willing to surrender
to the ICC than be punished by domestic actors.
10 Anthony Shadid, “At Mubarak Trial, Stark Image of Humbled Power,” The New York Times, 3 August 2011.
11 Philippe Sands, “Referring Syria to the international criminal court is a justified gamble,” The Guardian, 16 January 2013.
Farida Hussain, “Is prosecuting Assad a better option than Syria strike?,” CBC News, 7 September 2013.
12 See, for example, Dix (1982), Huntington (1991b), Sutter (1995), and Goldsmith (2003).
13 Cited in Farida Hussain, “Is prosecuting Assad a better option than Syria strike?,” CBC News, 7 September 2013.
14 Further, Nalepa (2010) argues that a er the breakdown of party regimes in Communist Europe, transitional justice was
avoided because notable opposition members had worked as informants for the autocratic police. Elites in the new
democracy therefore did not renege on their promise of amnesty in an e ort to avoid exposing their own “skeletons in the
closet.”
15 Prior to the election, and before the possibility of an alliance between the two largest parties, Nidaa Tounes and Ennahda,
one commentator pointed that: “If this alliance is made, we must mourn the transitional justice, because who will account
to whom? A tacit agreement was already signed by Nidaa Tunis and Ennahda not to open each otherʼs files and to ignore
the corruption, the mismanagement of state resources, the dictatorship and the various abuses of human rights.” See
Hanene Zbiss, “Dangerous alliance between Ennahda and Nidaa Tunis,” Al-Monitor, 2 April 2014.
16 Indeed, more than 30 percent of transitions to democracy from personalist rule result in the dictator going into exile.
17 See the report of the U.N. Secretary-General: “The rule of law and transitional justice in conflict and post-conflict
societies” (S/2004/616).
18 Raphael Minder, “Argentine Judge Seeks to Put Franco O icials on Trial,” The New York Times, 30 September 2013.
19 Belgium demanded extradition on the grounds of universal jurisdiction and the International Court of Justice ordered
Senegal to either prosecute Habré or to extradite him. Senegal and the African Union then agreed to prosecute Habré in
Senegal. See: “Senegal: Proceedings Against Hissène Habré Draw Near,” Human Rights Watch, 19 December 2012.
20 A judge had previously dismissed human rights charges, arguing that the statute of limitations had expired. Amelie Baron,
“Haiti court says human rights charges can be brought against Duvalier,” Reuters, 20 February 2014.
21 See Haas (1992), Weyland (2005), and Meseguer (2009) for explanations of di usion among neighboring countries.
22 Robin Paxton, “Interview-Kazakh PM says opposition needed in parliament,” Reuters, 2 April 2011.
23 K moves from 1 to 20 because we group countries that fall within each of the 20 distance thresholds between 0 km and
1000 km of minimum distance. The weight for the count of HRPs in neighboring countries within 50 km is therefore 1/ln
(50)=0.2566. For neighboring countries that fall within 950 km and 1000 km of minimum distance, the count (∑ k∈K
N ) of
k

neighboring HRPs is weighted by 1/ln (1000)=0.1448. The sum of the weights (there are 20 weights, one for each 50 km and
1000 km) is 3.6437.
24 In replication files we show that the main result remains when dropping these variables and when adding more control
variables (military intervention, civil war, anti-regime protest campaigns, and repression).
25 The substantive interpretation from a conditional logit is biased upwards because the non-linear estimator drops all
countries that do not experience a transition during the sample period. Thus the baseline transition probability in these
samples is considerably larger than the baseline probabilities from the larger sample employed in the linear model.
26 Peter Finn, “Experts say Gaddafi relying on paramilitary forces, foreign mercenaries to crush protests,” The Washington
Post, 23 February 2011.
27 Ian Black, “Gaddafi urges violent showdown and tells Libya ʻIʼll die a martyrʼ,” The Guardian, 22 February 2011.
28 Philippe Sands, “The ICC arrest warrants will make Colonel Gaddafi dig in his heels,” The Guardian, 4 May 2011.
29 David E. Sanger and Eric Schmitt, “U.S. and Allies Seek a Refuge for Qaddafi,” The New York Times, 16 April 2011. Holly
Watt, “Secret MI6 plot to help Col Gaddafi escape Libya revealed,” The Telegraph, 27 September 2013.
30 Vivienne Walt, “Death, Prison or Exile: Gaddafi Is Out of Options,” Time, 1 June 2011. Aislinn Laing, “Libya: Col Gaddafi
could flee to Venezuela or Cuba,” The Telegraph, 22 August 2011.
31 Barbara Walter, “Why Didnʼt Qaddafi go into exile?,” The Monkey Cage, 25 October 2011.
32 David Smith, “Where could Colonel Muammar Gaddafi go if he were exiled?,” The Guardian, 21 February 2011.
33 “Rice: Qaddafi exile an option if he ends killing,” CBS News, 1 March 2011.
34 “US admits helping Mengistu escape,” BBC News, 22 December 1999.
35 William J. Dobson, “Dictator seeks second home? A guide to Gaddafiʼs exile options,” The Washington Post, 29 March 2011.
36 “Mengistu found guilty of genocide,” BBC News, 12 December 2006.
37 Ariel Ben Solomon, “Could Libya break apart?,” Jerusalem Post, 4 November 2013. Patrick Cockburn, “We all thought Libya

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had moved on—it has, but into lawlessness and ruin,” The Independent, 3 September 2013.
38 Nasser Arrabyee, “Yemenʼs Saleh calls on opposition to end protests,” Gulf News, 3 April 2011.
39 “Yemen: President Saleh injured in attack on palace,” BBC News, 3 June 2011.
40 Neil MacFarquhar, “Yemenʼs Leader Is Said to Plan Return ʻin Daysʼ,” The New York Times, 6 June 2011.
41 “Yemen parliament approves immunity law,” Al Jazeera, 21 January 2012.
42 Mohammed Ghobari, “Yemeni president curbs rivalʼs power in army overhaul,” Reuters, 19 December 2012.
43 “Yemen president orders military shake-up,” Al Jazeera, 11 April 2013.