John D. Ciorciari

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Dean at Indiana University Bloomington

A number of important legal and institutional experiments have been undertaken at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), a UN-backed tribunal established to try some of the most egregious crimes of the Pol Pot era. The ECCC is the first UN-supported hybrid criminal tribunal to mandate a majority of national judges and to divid...

This article reviews and critiques recent scholarly work on Southeast Asian relations with the great powers, examining the strategies that ASEAN governments have used and the effects of those strategies. The author argues that Southeast Asian governments have generally steered away from traditional balance of power politics to promote a more comple...

In 2009 and 2010, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) established two new human rights bodies: an inter-governmental human rights commission and a commission for the protection of women and children. This article examines the process leading to their creation, focusing on the normative and political debates that made creating an ASEA...

Delivering justice for genocide, war crimes, and other mass atrocities inevitably presents steep political challenges. That has certainly been true in Asia, where relatively few such international crimes have been prosecuted. Many Japanese were tried for war crimes following the Second World War, but for decades thereafter, the region saw only a fe...

On September 22, 2022, the Supreme Court Chamber (SCC) of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) pronounced its judgment against Khieu Samphan, a key figure in the Khmer Rouge regime that ruled the country in the late 1970s. The appellate SCC upheld the Trial Chamber's conviction of Khieu Samphan for war crimes and genocide, as...

The decade 2004–14—when the two United Progressive Alliance (UPA) governments, led by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, were in office—was a remarkable milestone in the history of India’s diplomacy. The period saw a significant transformation in the way India deals with the external world. Under the quiet and active leadership of Prime Minister Manmoh...

This article examines the benefits and pitfalls of international policing in Haiti over the past quarter century. It shows the importance of the political foundations for joint policing arrangements. Haiti's experience illustrates that international personnel can provide useful stopgap policing services when the interests of national and internatio...

The concept of hedging enjoys increasing use and attention in studies of international relations, particularly with respect to secondary states in the context of great power relations and competition. Increasingly, there is a consensus that hedging is a form of risk management. However, debates about the nature of hedging and its conceptual boundar...

In fragile states, domestic and international actors sometimes take the momentous step of sharing sovereign authority to provide basic public services and build the rule of law. While sovereignty sharing can help address gaps in governance, it is inherently difficult, risking redundancy, confusion over roles, and feuds between partners when their i...

This chapter discusses the troubled effort to create, design, and manage a hybrid judicial process in Lebanon after the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri. It shows how that country’s profound domestic divisions rendered the government unable to issue a clear delegation of sovereign authority. The UN Security Council therefore impo...

This book examines “sovereignty-sharing” in fragile states, focusing on ventures in which domestic and international actors share authority to provide basic public services and build the rule of law. It examines how and why these ventures are created, designed, and implemented and what determines their perceived legitimacy and effectiveness. The bo...

This chapter examines the normative debates around sovereignty sharing. It discusses the possible benefits of the practice and the numerous critiques of deep external intervention into fragile-state governance. It argues that three factors bear upon the perceived legitimacy of a sovereignty-sharing venture: host state consent, genuine humanitarian...

This chapter reviews the potential and pitfalls of hybrid criminal courts that blend national and international laws, procedures, and personnel. It presents a detailed case study of the Special Court for Sierra Leone to illustrate the possibility for a mixed tribunal to perform well and earn public legitimacy when the preferences of national and in...

This chapter examines international policing in fragile states. It discusses the aims and challenges of engaging external actors in core domestic law enforcement functions, drawing from the multiple cases in which external actors and local police have shared sovereign police powers. It then examines the case of joint policing in Timor-Leste, and sh...

This chapter focuses on the Khmer Rouge tribunal, and the danger of building a mixed court on a fragile political foundation. It shows how distrust and feuds between the United Nations and its Cambodian partners have contributed to a problematic and unwieldy design for the tribunal. The court has been able to deliver credible justice for cases in w...

The conclusion ties together the major analytic findings of the book. It draws policy implications of the study, reviews recent trends, and reflects on the prognosis for shared sovereignty in fragile states.

This chapter analyzes the possibilities for sharing authority outside the judicial sphere in order to curb corruption. It concentrates on the seminal experiment in this area: the Governance and Economic Management Program in Liberia, created in 2005, which granted external actors cosigning authority with certain key Liberian officials. GEMAP was ab...

This chapter analyzes the political factors that affect the performance of a sovereignty-sharing venture. It explains the need for a supportive political equilibrium to enable effective implementation of a joint venture that can earn performance legitimacy. Such arrangements usually rest on precarious political foundations, due to the divergent int...

This chapter explores efforts to fight corruption and impunity by sharing sovereign authority over domestic criminal investigation. It focuses on the UN International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG), the pioneering venture in this domain, and shows how a confluence of political factors led the Guatemalan government to agree in 2007...

In 2020, Cambodia experienced its sharpest economic contraction in more than a quarter-century as COVID-19 crippled its tourism industry, hampered foreign investment, and reduced demand for exports from its crucial garment and textile sectors. Wary of simmering popular unrest, the government of long-serving Prime Minister Hun Sen sought to support...

This chapter examines how the vulnerable distance between mainland Southeast Asia and the United States, both geographically and politically, has contributed to the sub-region's exposure to a high degree of Chinese influence.

Bolstering basic law enforcement is a major aim of most contemporary peacekeeping missions. In some cases, when local police forces have failed, governments have allowed international personnel to step into the breach and share law enforcement authority with the state. These ‘sovereignty-sharing’ ventures have had two prime mandates – to provide ef...

In 2019, Cambodia saw long-ruling Prime Minister Hun Sen tighten his grip on power. Economic growth continued, but with rising risks related to a real estate bubble, mounting debt, and yawning social inequality. Externally, Cambodia deepened its dependency on China, insulating the Hun Sen regime in some respects but contributing to new vulnerabilit...

In recent years, the concept of ‘hedging’ has risen to prominence in international relations discourse. Hedging normally refers in that context to a national security or alignment strategy, undertaken by one state toward another, featuring a mix of cooperative and confrontational elements. It is often contrasted with balancing or bandwagoning, conc...

Governments often adopt hedging strategies to mitigate risks they face in international affairs. They hedge in the conventional, financial sense of the term by seeking to offset risks in global markets. They also adopt strategies to hedge against international security hazards by preserving strategic ambiguity, forging limited security alignments,...

Contracting out what are traditionally regarded as core sovereign functions is an iconic example of governance in areas of limited statehood. When national political authorities share sovereign authority with external actors, at least two key questions arise. First, when will such arrangements be accepted as legitimate? Second, how can they boost t...

While the existing literature emphasizes that elites often have incentives to pander to nationalist sentiment, much less attention has been paid to elite efforts to subdue popular nationalism, either to avoid domestic instability or international escalation. This article examines how different governments respond to nationalist protests and the res...

While the existing literature emphasizes that elites often have incentives to pander to nationalist sentiment, much less attention has been paid to elite efforts to subdue popular nationalism, either to avoid unwanted domestic instability or international escalation. This article examines how different governments respond to nationalist protests an...

Whether they appear as witnesses, victim participants, or civil parties in mass crimes proceedings, victims can contribute vital evidence and insight bearing on the guilt or innocence of the accused. Their testimony can contribute to the truth-telling function of the process, and under some circumstances, may help them cope with trauma. However, vi...

As China rises, its influence on other states' policy choices will depend partly on the extent of its "structural power." This article examines China's role in Asian monetary affairs and argues that deficient structural power has contributed to a significant gap between China's waxing economic resources and its policy influence. © 2014 by the Regen...

Despite extensive economic ties and political engagement throughout Asia and sizable investment in some of the region's most vulnerable regimes, China has yet to develop a stable of devoted client states. This article argues that both strategic and normative factors militate against China's cultivation of strong patron-client pacts. The article the...

Since 2006, the United Nations and Cambodian Government have participated in the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, a hybrid tribunal created to try key Khmer Rouge officials for crimes of the Pol Pot era. In Hybrid Justice, John D. Ciorciari and Anne Heindel examine the contentious politics behind the tribunal’s creation, its flawed...

Societies undertake a variety of truth and accountability measures to deal with legacies of gross human rights violations. For those measures to be effective, courts, commissions, victims and their representatives, and the general public need access to official records and archives. Archival materials can shed light on specific acts of abuse, as we...

This article attempts to shed additional light on one of the most sensitive aspects of China’s Cold War legacy — its support for Pol Pot’s Democratic Kampuchea (DK) between April 1975 and January 1979. Drawing on field interviews with former Khmer Rouge cadres and official DK records, it examines how the terms of the Sino-DK entente were understood...

For decades, the United States has enjoyed extensive policy influence stemming from its hegemonic position within the international monetary order – a position defined both by the dollar’s status as the principal reserve currency and U.S primacy in international financial forums and institutions. More recently, China has begun to amass many of the...

In recent years, Cambodia has become one of China's closest international partners and diplomatic allies. Cambodia's apparent defense of China during ASEAN talks on the South China Sea demonstrated the strength of the partnership and its relevance to broader regional relations. This paper examines key trends in the relationship and argues that it c...

Written for a symposium on truth and reconciliation in South Korea, this article offers lessons from the Cambodian experience with truth and reconciliation. Cambodia might be a counter-intuitive case study given that it has never convened a formal truth and reconciliation commission, yet offers important lessons for South Korea and other states see...

This working paper explores legal and policy issues that arise when collections of documents pertaining to past atrocities are discovered in societies emerging from civil war, state collapse, or dire misrule. Although national and international laws provide some guidance on the archival steps to be taken, that guidance is often quite limited in tra...

South Asia's Weak States: Understanding the Regional Insecurity Predicament. Edited by PaulT. V.. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010. 352p. $70.00 cloth, $27.95 paper. - Volume 9 Issue 4 - John D. Ciorciari

In 2010, the Chiang Mai Initiative Multilateralization (CMIM) agreement established a new Asian financial arrangement to help address potential currency or liquidity crises. This article analyzes the origins and basic features of the new arrangement, which reflect both progress and the continuing political challenges of building regional institutio...

Addressing widespread trauma is crucial for any society emerging from mass atrocities. Advocates of criminal accountability processes contend that trials can help victims heal from trauma by providing justice and enabling at least some survivors to tell their stories. Numerous studies suggest, however, that involving victims in judicial proceedings...

The Limits of Alignment is an engaging and accessible study that explores how small states and middle powers of Southeast Asia ensure their security in a world where they are overshadowed by greater powers. John D. Ciorciari challenges a central concept in international relations theory—that states respond to insecurity by either balancing against...

Although often overshadowed by the rise of China, India's ascent since its era of economic liberalization has been one of the most dramatic developments in the international system over the past quarter century. As India moves toward great-power status, its strategic choices could have game-changing effects on the international system. This paper e...

This paper examines the pooled regional financial mechanism created in East Asia pursuant to the ASEAN 3 Chiang Mai Initiative. It examines the origins of the new facility and discusses the near-term challenges that its architects will face in creating a credible and effective mechanism for delivering liquidity support. It argues that although tech...

The British declared a State of Emergency in Malaysia in 1948. This gave the authorities special powers which later became a part of Malaysian Law in 1960 as the Internal Security Act (ISA). These powers have been relied upon repeatedly and in the aftermath of 9/11 the threat of Islamic terrorism now presents new opportunities for their use. The po...

This Article reviews the principal means of IFI peace-building and offers several proposals to enhance the effectiveness of those means. Focusing primarily on the World Bank Group and the IMF, this Article posits that profound changes are necessary if the Bretton Woods institutions are to realize their potential as leaders in the international peac...

This article explores the meaning of great-power status to India’s governing elites and traces how they have pursued their goal of becoming a legitimate great power over several decades. It argues that India's distinctive approach to great-power status reflects its experience of past vulnerability, relative social exclusion from great-power politic...