This is equally true for transitional justice. As was seen, and well-described by Olsen et al
(Olsen, Payne & Reiter. 2010), there is widespread use of transitional justice mechanisms
from 1970 onwards, and, for the sample under consideration here. Amnesties and domestic
criminal prosecutions dominate, but, as seen here, there are differences, as there are for all
transitional justice mechanisms. All mechanisms increase significantly once a transition has
taken place (Table 5), with a diminution in the use of amnesties, post-transition, and
significant increases in all other mechanisms post-transition. This seems easy enough to
understand and it is obvious that authoritarian regimes will have little interest in
accountability while in power, and, furthermore, that amnesties are the frequent mechanism
to ensure that there is protection for the authoritarian elite in the aftermath of transition.
A second finding of relevance for Zimbabwe was that there were no real differences between
African countries and other countries in the world in the application of transitional justice
mechanisms either pre or post-transition. Given that half (53%) of the African countries in
this sample are still rated as Not Free, one might quickly conclude that transitional justice has
had little effect on the development of subsequent democracy. However, foreign criminal
prosecutions and reparations were slightly more frequent for African countries. For the
former, and here there have been some very high profile (and contentious) prosecutions, this
suggests that true accountability of the authoritarian elites may be difficult domestically, and
here the dominance of military-individual regimes, the “big man” syndrome, should be noted.
For the latter, reparations, it is worth pondering the importance of compensation in African
traditional justice systems, which is well-described in the various studies on transitional
justice that have been carried out in Zimbabwe (RAU. 2009; HRF. 2011).
Given the predominance of military-individual regimes, and taking note of the
characterisation of Zimbabwe as a securocracy (Mandaza. 2016), the analysis of transitions
according to regime type was interesting. The comparison of civilian as opposed to military
regime types did not reveal any interesting differences, save the increase in foreign criminal
prosecutions, post-transition, and there were only two in Africa, in Benin and the Republic of
the Congo. This again is an artefact of the data set in which Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Liberia,
Chad, etc., all countries where there have been well-publicised trials of former leaders or
notorious perpetrators.
There were more interesting differences when a contrast was made between authoritarian
regimes controlled by individuals as opposed to those controlled by collectives, whether
civilian or military. Here it was found that there were greater frequencies of amnesties, truth
commissions, domestic criminal prosecutions and vettings in countries transitioning from
individual-dominated regimes.
However, overall there was little to distinguish countries on the basis of regime type: all
showed a range of transitional justice mechanisms in the pre-transition period, and for all
there is a significant increase in the use of all transitional justice mechanisms in the posttransition period. Hence, it cannot be said that transitional justice mechanisms, either pre or
post- transition, seem to have any effect upon whether a country becomes Free, and,
furthermore, countries do not seem to easily move towards becoming free. This is probably
not surprising and whether a country becomes fully democratic after authoritarian rule will
most likely depend on many factors in addition to whether a country confronts the excesses
of such rule. For example, as Lucian Way (2011) has pointed out about the 1989 transitions,
democratisation in the Eastern-bloc countries seemed to depend on long-term structural
factors such as the level of economic development and, importantly, the strength of ties in
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