Accountability Shock: Why Transitional Justice Prevents Criminal Wars in New Democracies

Why do some new democracies develop peacefully while others descend into criminal wars? Accountability Shock (coauthored by Guillermo Trejo, Lucia Tiscornia and Juan Albarracin, Cambridge University Press 2026) argues that the answer lies in how newly elected governments confront — or ignore — their authoritarian past. When post-authoritarian elites pursue truth commissions and criminal prosecutions for past atrocities, they break the cycle of state impunity that enables criminal violence to take hold. Where they extend amnesty and silence instead, criminal wars follow. The book's findings challenge a long-standing policy assumption: accountability is not a threat to fragile democracies — impunity is.In this discussion with the IIEA, Lucia Tiscornia and Roger Mac Ginty will discuss the role of accountability in conflict prevention, and how post-authoritarian states can strengthen democratic institutions, address legacies of violence and build the foundations for sustainable peace and security. Lucía Tiscornia is Associate Professor in the School of Politics and International Relations at University College Dublin and Faculty Fellow at the Geary Institute for Public Policy. She works at the intersection of political science, criminology, and international relations, with research expertise in criminal governance, state violence, and security sector reform. Her most recent project, funded through a European Research Council Starting Grant, focuses on understanding criminal governance in contexts where one would not expect to find it. Roger Mac Ginty is Professor in Defence, Development and Diplomacy in the School of Government and International Affairs at Durham University. He works on peace and conflict, with a particular focus on the intersection between top-down and bottom-up approaches to peacemaking and on everyday peace. He co-directs the Everyday Peace Indicators project and co-edits the journal Peacebuilding. His research has been funded by the EU, the ESRC, and the Carnegie Corporation of New York.