The Causes and Effects of Hybrid Anti-impunity Commissions: Outline of a Research Agenda

In a variety of issue-areas in global governance, hybrid solutions have been experimented with in order to address the dilemma created by the export of Western templates of good governance, democracy, the rule of law, etc. to non-Western contexts. The latest manifestation of this global trend towards hybridity are hybrid anti-impunity commissions which have begun to proliferate in Latin America, and which are likely to produce ripple-effects beyond the continent. Their prototype, the Comision Internacional Contra la Impunidad en Guatemala (CICIG), was deployed in Guatemala; later, variants of CICIG were created in Honduras, El Salvador, and Ecuador. However, the new hybrids remain largely underresearched. This contribution therefore discusses the state of art and outlines a research agenda on these new hybrid commissions, arguing that, on the one hand, the effects of these mechanisms require further scrutiny – how do hybrid anti-impunity commissions shape a variety of possible outcomes including the rule of law, statehood, sovereignty, democracy, and the like? On the other hand, we should investigate the factors that contribute to the establishment, successes, and failures of these hybrids, thus treating them as outcomes to be explained.