Examining the ‘age of apology’: Insights from the Political Apology database
Zoodsma,Marieke Schaafsma,Juliette
Zoodsma,Marieke
Schaafsma,Juliette
Abstract
It is often assumed that we are currently living in an ‘age of apology’, whereby countries increasingly seek to redress human rights violations by offering apologies. Although much has been written about why this may occur, the phenomenon itself has never been examined through a large-scale review of the apologies that have been offered. To fill this gap, we created a database of political apologies that have been offered for human rights violations across the world. We found 329 political apologies offered by 74 countries, and cross-nationally mapped and compared these apologies. Our data reveal that apologies have increasingly been offered since the end of the Cold War, and that this trend has accelerated in the last 20 years. They have been offered across the globe, be it that they seem to have been embraced by consolidated liberal democracies and by countries transitioning to liberal democracies in particular. Most apologies have been offered for human rights violations that were related to or took place in the context of a (civil) war, but there appears to be some selectivity as to the specific human rights violations that countries actually mention in the apologies. On average, it takes more than a generation before political apologies are offered.
Description
Funding Information: We are very grateful to Rhoda Howard-Hassmann, Canada Research Chair in International Human Rights 2003–16 at Wilfrid Laurier University, for providing us full access to the data that she and her team collected for the Political Apologies and Reparations website. We also thank Martin Hoondert for his valuable comments on earlier drafts of this manuscript. This study was funded by a European Research Council Consolidator Grant awarded to Juliette Schaafsma (682077-APOLOGY) under the Horizon 2020 research and innovation program. Funding Information: This study was funded by a European Research Council Consolidator Grant awarded to Juliette Schaafsma (682077-APOLOGY) under the Horizon 2020 research and innovation program. Publisher Copyright: © The Author(s) 2021.
Date
2022-05
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Research Projects
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Keywords
Cross-national, Database, Human rights, Political apologies, SDG 16 - Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions
Citation
Zoodsma, M & Schaafsma, J 2022, 'Examining the ‘age of apology’: Insights from the Political Apology database', Journal of Peace Research, vol. 59, no. 3, 00223433211024696, pp. 436–448. https://doi.org/10.1177/00223433211024696