Last week, France’s Nicholas Sarkozy became the first former president of a European Union state to serve time in prison. He will be held in solitary confinement, with limited phone access and scheduled visitation times. And while his case is unusual for the EU, it is far from unique. In democratic states, these types of prosecutions have become increasingly common in recent years. Countries like France, Brazil, and the United States have all seen intense legal and political battles over the prosecutions of their elected leaders.
Proponents of these prosecutions argue that they strengthen democracy by reinforcing accountability, while opponents counter that they erode trust and drive polarization. But what effect do these prosecutions actually have? To answer this question, we have created a comprehensive new dataset of modern leaders who have been prosecuted by their own governments. Our research confirmed that despite what men like Sarkozy, U.S. President Donald Trump, and former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro may insist, prosecuting a former president or prime minister is a normal and healthy thing for advanced democracies to do.
Between 1989 and 2021, more than three quarters of all democratic and hybrid regimes initiated at least one prosecution case against a former leader. (We excluded autocratic rulers since the politics of prosecutions follow a different logic in such regimes). Out of the more than 800 non-autocratic leaders who governed during that period, over a quarter were prosecuted by their own governments—sometimes more than once. Around two-thirds of those prosecuted faced just one charge. But others racked up multiple charges, with a few extreme outliers like former Bangladeshi Prime Minister Khaleda Zia and former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi with 14 charges each.
Looking back in history, there are roughly three phases in the spread of leader prosecutions: an increase between the late 1980s and 2000, a slowdown after the turn of the millennium, followed by another swift increase over the last decade.
The geography is uneven, with South America leading and the Middle East lagging, but the overall direction is clear. Neither a panacea nor an aberration, prosecutions now seem to be part of the normal repertoire of democratic contention. They do not, on average, seem to wreck a country’s political health. Our preliminary data found that democracies that indict former leaders do not become more polarized afterward, nor do they typically spiral into partisan vendettas.
Are domestic prosecutions the specialty of weak or corrupt democracies? After Trump was indicted in March 2023 for making hush-money payments, he took to social media to protest. “The USA is now a third world world nation, a nation in serious decline,” he posted in all caps. Only corrupt or undeveloped countries, he implied, would even consider prosecuting their own leaders. One of his sons, Eric Trump, quickly echoed the sentiment, calling the indictment a case of “third world prosecutorial misconduct.”
The evidence, however, has suggested that far from being the specialty of “banana republics,” domestic prosecutions are just as likely to occur in wealthy and stable countries. We didn’t find any evidence that prosecutions increase the chance of democratic breakdown, and we found no link between economic wealth (measured in per capita GDP) and the likelihood of prosecution. State capacity does not seem to matter either—states with weak indicators of capacity were not more likely to prosecute than strongly institutionalized ones. In short, prosecutions can—and do—happen anywhere.
A commonly cited downside of prosecutions is increased polarization and decreased trust in the political system. We found no evidence that prosecution increases polarization, but we did find that polarized countries may be more likely to initiate prosecutions in the first place. Leader prosecutions are also more common in countries with stronger judiciaries, which suggests a link between strong courts and the willingness to pursue charges. One of our consistent findings is that initial prosecution does not appear to make additional ones more likely, suggesting that spirals of retribution are not the norm.
Another key question is whether these prosecutions accomplish actual results or remain political theater. We found that nearly half of the charges resulted in acquittals and dismissals. Yet the second-highest outcome, with approximately 22 percent, was imprisonment. In nearly an equal number of cases, the defendants were found guilty but instead of prison time, they paid fines, endured house arrest, or received pardons.
In this light, attempts at prosecutions in countries like France and the United States are not an outlier but part of a wider pattern of modern governance. Modern states should not be afraid to go after their former leaders. Rather, they should worry about failing to do so. Historical record suggests that over the long term, democracies are more likely to falter when they hold rulers above the law instead of holding them accountable.
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