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

This book shows how Rwanda's mass courts for genocide crimes helped ensure political stability and authoritarian control for Rwandan elites.

Anuradha Chakravarty (Author)

9781107084087, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 11 December 2015

390 pages, 9 b/w illus. 11 tables
23.5 x 15.8 x 2.6 cm, 0.7 kg

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.

Introduction
Part I. Clientelist and Authoritarian Legacies: 1. A history of clientelism in Rwanda
2. The RPF: an unrivaled patron
Part II. Formal and Informal Rules of the Game: 3. The mental map: shared expectations of rule
4. The gacaca court: deciding innocence and guilt
Part III. Consolidating Authoritarianism: 5. Confessions: surrendering the right to rule
6. Denunciations: local space and local control
7. Judges: political cooptation at the grassroots
Conclusion.

Subject Areas: International criminal law [LBBZ], International human rights law [LBBR], Law & society [LAQ]