Duvalier and disincentives for dictators to democratize

Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier, a former dictator of Haiti, is back in Haiti and back in the news. He has, well, run into some difficulties, including incarceration, and his difficulties bring up some interesting questions.

Some helpful background is provided by The National Post's Araminta Wordsworth, who discusses the lives of the ex-dictators of yesterday and today:

It used to be a familiar scenario. An aging dictator is ejected from his homeland by a coup. He flees to a foreign bolt hole where he lives in luxury on the proceeds of ill-gotten gains stolen in his years of power. Then, in the fullness of time, he dies in his bed.

     Think Idi Amin of Uganda and Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire, now Democratic Republic of Congo, who became guests of Saudi Arabia and Morocco respectively. Or Ferdinand Marcos after departing the Philippines.

Things have changed, Wordsworth notes:

To begin with, banking authorities in traditionally secretive countries such as Switzerland are willing to freeze suspect accounts. Next, the supply of congenial safe havens is drying up, as Zinedine Ben Ali discovered to his cost last week.
   [...] Another hazard for today’s dictators is being indicted by international courts, like the UN tribunals for the former Yugoslavia (Slobdan Milosevic of Yugoslavia) or Sierra Leone (Charles Taylor of Liberia).
    Omar al-Bashir, Sudan’s President, faces the possibility of such a fate should he ever fall from power. The International Criminal Court at The Hague wants him for genocide in Darfur.

While it's certainly infuriating when someone who's destroyed many lives lives in luxury to the natural end of his own, this new trend might be bad news. Dictators are people, and people respond to incentives. It's a heck of a lot easier to convince a dictator to give up power if he or she will be trading it for life in a villa in the Alps, rather than a jail cell.

An example: Augusto Pinochet killed, imprisoned or exiled his political competition, for which he should have faced justice. However, if other dictators had been or were being prosecuted at that time - if he knew he'd face justice at home and abroad (thanks to the ICC and 'universal jurisdiction' laws in Spain and elsewhere) - Pinochet may not have exited as he did: gradually and peacefully stepping aside throughout the 1980s as Chile transitioned to democracy.  In the same way, his own post-power tribulations might mean longer tenures and bloodier transitions for today's dictatorships. The just desire to see former dictators punished might have to be sacrificed for the benefit of those living under current ones.