Onur Bakiner, Truth Commission Impact: Insights from Recent Scholarship

In this talk, Onur Bakiner provided an overview of the philosophical underpinnings, conceptual frames, and methodological choices informing the scholarship on truth commission impact to examine whether, how, how much, and why truth commissions influence policy, court decisions, and social norms. The findings of empirical scholarship range from partial confirmation of these bold and at times vague expectations to damning accounts of commissions’ failure to deliver.

What is more, scholars have set implicit and explicit standards for what coming to terms with the past truth a truth commission should mean: building liberal democratic institutions, transforming socioeconomic, gendered and racialized hierarchies, and reflecting local values, norms and power dynamics. Especially those studies that demand attentiveness to social justice and local j ...