Bargaining for truth and reconciliation in South Africa: A game-theoretic analysis

As regimes move from illiberal to liberal, post-transition justice methodol ogy has been employed to engender truth and reconciliation. These normative concepts have evolved into a policy of creating truth and reconciliation c ommissions that trade civil and criminal amnesty with applicants in exchang e for information. This bargained-for exchange can be analyzed as an imperf ect information game, where the commission attempts to maximize information (truth) while the applicant seeks amnesty for the lowest possible price. U sing game-theoretic analysis, the authors model the truth-amnesty game and predict the optimal commission strategy. The analysis leads to the recommen dation that future transitional justice commissions employ various specific lexicographic ordering strategies to minimize dead weight loss in the tran saction.