Periodic Reporting for period 4 - APOLOGY (Political Apologies across Cultures)
Reporting period: 2021-03-01 to 2022-02-28
My project addresses this challenge. Using an innovative, interdisciplinary, and multi-method approach with in-depth interviews, (experimental) surveys, and content analyses of apologies, I analyze whether there are universals in how political apologies are valued, expressed, and interpreted or whether this varies as a function of cross-cultural differences in key values (collectivism and individualism) and norms (face and honor). Based on these findings, I build a theoretical framework that will fundamentally advance our understanding of the potential value and role of apologies in transitional justice processes.
This project breaks new ground because it is the first to take the difficult step to collect cross-cultural data to examine whether key assumptions regarding political apologies hold across cultures. It is also the first in this area to use a multi-method approach, which makes it possible to take into account the complex reality of political apologies. Combining insights from transitional justice, cross-cultural psychology and anthropology, this project places theorizing on transitional justice on a much firmer footing and paves the way to more cross-culturally valid models to restore justice and promote reconciliation.
Another key goal in this project was to examine how political apologies are expressed and received across different countries. For this, we created a database of political apologies for human rights violations across the world, which we also coded in terms of their content and form. This database is now publicly available, together with all the coded files (www.politicalapologies.com). We also conducted three case studies on the apologies for the El Mozote massacre in El Salvador, the massacre on Jeju island (South Korea), and Bloody Sunday (UK). We conducted 127 interviews and collected 1,011 surveys among victim and non-victim community members in these countries regarding their evaluation of the meaning and impact of the apology. Finally, we conducted an experimental survey across 32 countries (N> 11,000), in which participants were asked to imagine a situation in which their country had either been the perpetrator or the victim of violence, and in which they evaluated different versions of an apology given for the harm done. Our findings show that political apologies for human rights violations have been offered by countries across the globe, but by liberal democracies in particular. We find that there is remarkable overlap in the types of rhetorical strategies that countries use in these apologies to (1) acknowledge past wrongdoings, (3) bridge past wrongdoings with future intentions, and (3) bond with the intended recipients of the apology. Furthermore, we show how countries use these strategies not only to address the needs of victims, but also to portray and understand themselves, whereby they often imitate the language that has become standard in human rights memorialization practices. Our case studies show that the apology that was offered was seen as a relatively important, but not necessarily as an impactful gesture. For it to be perceived as impactful, it also has to be seen as a meaningful (i.e. sincere) gesture, and this depends (among other things) on people’s trust in the country’s institutions. Overall, our findings suggest that apologies have a role to play in the aftermath of human rights violations, but that it is essential to take the broader context into account.
Our findings have been published in academic journals, and we have also given numerous invited talks and presentations at national and international conferences. We have written popular pieces as well, and we have appeared on radio shows and in podcasts. Our research has also been covered by various magazines. Our database on political apologies has been made publicly available.