Institutional Design, Prosecutorial Independence, and Accountability: Lessons from the International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG)

Abstract

In 2007 the International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala began working to support the work of the Public Prosecutor’s Office to investigate and prosecute cases of corruption. In this short article, I address three questions: What was the design of CICIG? What were its results? How did the institutional design contribute to the impact it had in Guatemala? To answer these questions, I first discuss the problem of impunity and provide an interdisciplinary review of the factors that impact when a state punishes crime. In the following section, I briefly explain the institutionalist framework that guides my analysis of the work of CICIG and explain the theoretical importance of institutional design in the functioning of prosecutorial organs. In the third section I describe the institutional design of CICIG, its impact, and its limitations. In this section I explain how key characteristics in its design made this international commission a creative solution against impunity in a context where prosecuting state agents for human rights violations or corruption was virtually impossible. I conclude this article highlighting some key lessons from CICIG on matters of institutional design.