The politics of accountability

The politics of accountability

In countries transitioning from repressive regimes and civil wars to peace and democratization, the politics of accountability consists of serious disputes over the best ways to reckon with the legacies of past violence. Diverse institutional and social accountability mechanisms can be considered, but the types of accountability decisions made by local influential political and non-state actors are shaped by a set of contextual factors, including the ways in which the conflict ended, the local existence of a history of accountability practices, the types of involvement of the international actors on matters of justice, and the passage of time. Using the case study of post-civil war Mozambique (1976-1992), this chapter explores the types of institutional and social accountability mechanisms that were deployed, and sometimes unintendedly ignited, to address the legacies of past violence. Both forms of accountability have memories, social relationships, and public deliberations at their core, but they differ in terms of contexts and consequences. Initially, the institutional mechanisms focused on amnesty laws. Yet with the passage of time, the former war foes used the national parliament to mutually weaponize memories while also discursively demanding responsibility for their former opponent’s past actions as a strategy to undermine their political legitimacy. At the sociocultural level, war survivors used supernatural discourses and embodied accountability to come to terms with their experiences of serious wartime violations.

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