Truth Commissions after Economic Crises: Political Learning or Blame Game?
This article addresses an important but understudied aspect of the recent Great Recession in Europe: the institutional strategies political elites deployed to learn from past policy failures and address accountability, more specifically, truth commissions. We raise two overlapping puzzles. The first...
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crsagepubl:10.1177/0032321717706902 2024-10-20T14:09:38+00:00 Truth Commissions after Economic Crises: Political Learning or Blame Game? Kovras, Iosif McDaid, Shaun Hjalmarsson, Ragnar Economic and Social Research Council 2017 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0032321717706902 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0032321717706902 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full-xml/10.1177/0032321717706902 en eng SAGE Publications https://journals.sagepub.com/page/policies/text-and-data-mining-license Political Studies volume 66, issue 1, page 173-191 ISSN 0032-3217 1467-9248 journal-article 2017 crsagepubl https://doi.org/10.1177/0032321717706902 2024-10-08T04:07:31Z This article addresses an important but understudied aspect of the recent Great Recession in Europe: the institutional strategies political elites deployed to learn from past policy failures and address accountability, more specifically, truth commissions. We raise two overlapping puzzles. The first concerns the timing of the decision to adopt an economic truth commission: while Iceland established a truth commission at an early stage of the crisis, Greece and Ireland did so much later. What accounts for ‘early’ versus ‘delayed’ truth seekers? The second concerns variations in learning outcomes. Iceland’s commission paved the way for learning institutional lessons, but truth commissions in Greece and Ireland became overtly politicised. What accounts for these divergences? This article compares truth commissions in Iceland, Greece and Ireland and identifies two types of political learning – institutional and instrumental – related to the establishment of a truth commission. It argues that political elites in countries with higher pre-crisis levels of trust in institutions and public transparency are more likely to establish economic truth commissions quickly; this is the ‘institutional logic’ of learning. The ‘instrumental logic’ of learning, in contrast, leads governments interested in apportioning blame to their predecessors to establish commissions at a later date, usually proximal to critical elections. Article in Journal/Newspaper Iceland SAGE Publications Political Studies 66 1 173 191 |
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English |
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This article addresses an important but understudied aspect of the recent Great Recession in Europe: the institutional strategies political elites deployed to learn from past policy failures and address accountability, more specifically, truth commissions. We raise two overlapping puzzles. The first concerns the timing of the decision to adopt an economic truth commission: while Iceland established a truth commission at an early stage of the crisis, Greece and Ireland did so much later. What accounts for ‘early’ versus ‘delayed’ truth seekers? The second concerns variations in learning outcomes. Iceland’s commission paved the way for learning institutional lessons, but truth commissions in Greece and Ireland became overtly politicised. What accounts for these divergences? This article compares truth commissions in Iceland, Greece and Ireland and identifies two types of political learning – institutional and instrumental – related to the establishment of a truth commission. It argues that political elites in countries with higher pre-crisis levels of trust in institutions and public transparency are more likely to establish economic truth commissions quickly; this is the ‘institutional logic’ of learning. The ‘instrumental logic’ of learning, in contrast, leads governments interested in apportioning blame to their predecessors to establish commissions at a later date, usually proximal to critical elections. |
author2 |
Economic and Social Research Council |
format |
Article in Journal/Newspaper |
author |
Kovras, Iosif McDaid, Shaun Hjalmarsson, Ragnar |
spellingShingle |
Kovras, Iosif McDaid, Shaun Hjalmarsson, Ragnar Truth Commissions after Economic Crises: Political Learning or Blame Game? |
author_facet |
Kovras, Iosif McDaid, Shaun Hjalmarsson, Ragnar |
author_sort |
Kovras, Iosif |
title |
Truth Commissions after Economic Crises: Political Learning or Blame Game? |
title_short |
Truth Commissions after Economic Crises: Political Learning or Blame Game? |
title_full |
Truth Commissions after Economic Crises: Political Learning or Blame Game? |
title_fullStr |
Truth Commissions after Economic Crises: Political Learning or Blame Game? |
title_full_unstemmed |
Truth Commissions after Economic Crises: Political Learning or Blame Game? |
title_sort |
truth commissions after economic crises: political learning or blame game? |
publisher |
SAGE Publications |
publishDate |
2017 |
url |
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0032321717706902 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0032321717706902 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full-xml/10.1177/0032321717706902 |
genre |
Iceland |
genre_facet |
Iceland |
op_source |
Political Studies volume 66, issue 1, page 173-191 ISSN 0032-3217 1467-9248 |
op_rights |
https://journals.sagepub.com/page/policies/text-and-data-mining-license |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0032321717706902 |
container_title |
Political Studies |
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66 |
container_issue |
1 |
container_start_page |
173 |
op_container_end_page |
191 |
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1813449236366229504 |