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

This book investigates how Rwanda's mass courts for genocide crimes were used by elites to ensure social control and cement authoritarian rule. It is unique among studies on the topic in showing how the tools of confession, denunciation, and lay judging operated on an individual level.

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.