Is it Too Late Now to Say Sorry? A Cross-National Analysis of Political Apologies

The numerous measures that states can implement to deal with past injustices and human rights violations have grown exponentially in the past decades. International tribunals have been set up, reparations have been offered and commemorative monuments have been erected. A significant part of this process is often an acknowledgement of wrongdoing and an apology. How useful such apologies are is, however, often topic of debate within the field of transitional justice. Whereas some have argued that an apology is an essential gesture on “the road to reconciliation”, others have argued they may not fit in all cultures and can actually be a risky tool for peacemaking. Highly debated apologies are those, for example, by the Dutch ambassador to relatives of the victims of Rawagede, Indonesia, or the apologies by the Japanese government for crimes that took place during the Second World War. So far, it is unclear whether political apologies are a universally viable tool to restore justice and harmony following human rights violations. To examine how apologies are expressed across different countries and cultural settings, we have created a Political Apologies database in which we collected over two hundred political apologies, offered since the Second World War, for human rights violations. Are there cross-national differences and similarities in how these political apologies are expressed and received, and if so, what are they? For example, should reparations always accompany an apology? Is an explanation for wrongdoing a necessity, or can a non-verbal apology, such as Willy Brandt’s Kneefall, be as powerful? In our database, we coded the content (e.g. did the apology include an acknowledgement of wrongdoing, the acceptance of responsibility, an expression of remorse, and the promise of non-repetition?) and form (e.g. where, when, how, and by whom was the apology offered?) of each apology and included relevant country-level variables. In this paper, I will present the results of a first set of analyses that we conducted to examine cross-national variation in how political apologies are expressed. These findings will allow us to obtain a better understanding of cross-national trends in how political apologies are expressed in this so-called age of apology.