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Commissioning Legitimacy: The Global Logics of National Violence Commissions in the Twentieth Century

Southern Methodist University, mkeller{at}smu.edu

Based on an analysis of the reports of twenty-eight national-level public commission inquiries into events involving ethno-national violence—drawn from five national contexts and arrayed over the course of the twentieth century—this article demonstrates the strikingly transnational character of these investigatory bodies’ attempts to authoritatively explain episodes of collective violence and to thereby restore governing legitimacy in the wake of violent crises. One of four distinct "logics," or core explanatory frameworks, each associated with a particular mode of "racial power," characterized a diverse cross-national pool of violence commission reports during defined periods of the twentieth century. In revealing globally encompassing logics to what has often been framed as a national or case-specific phenomenon, the author shows how global ideational currents compose a key dimension of national political dynamics.

Key Words: public inquiries • political logics • collective violence • political legitimacy • transnationalism

This version was published on September 1, 2009

Politics & Society, Vol. 37, No. 3, 352-396 (2009)
DOI: 10.1177/1049731509338924


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