Transitional justice in the world, 1970-2007

Insights from a new dataset

Bibliographic Data

ID3916613
AuthorsThorkil Damsgaard Olsen (0000-0001-7640-7024, University of Wisconsin–Madison, corresponding author), Tricia D Olsen (University of Wisconsin–Madison), Leigh A Payne (0000-0002-0770-3919, University of Oxford, corresponding author), Andrew G Reiter (0000-0001-5812-5891, University of Wisconsin–Madison, corresponding author)
Year2010
Volume47
Issue6
Pages803-809
Publication date2010-11-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Peace Research (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0022-3433 • E-ISSN: 1460-3578
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/0022343310382205
OpenAlexW1987894199
LanguageEN
Citations received43
References cited18

This article presents a new dataset of transitional justice mechanisms utilized worldwide from 1970-2007. These data complement the growing body of quantitative and comparative analyses of transitional justice. This article summarizes three important contributions made by the dataset. First, it includes five transitional justice mechanisms (trials, truth commissions, amnesties, reparations, and lustration policies), allowing scholars to avoid many of the methodological errors committed by performing single-mechanism studies. Second, it provides an expanded sample, both temporally and geographically, to facilitate greater comparative and policy impact. Third, the dataset enables scholars to analyze transitional justice across a variety of political contexts, including democratic transitions and civil wars. These data illuminate a new set of general trends and patterns in the implementation of transitional justice worldwide. The findings show that countries adopt amnesties more often than other mechanisms. They predominantly grant them in the context of civil war and to opponents of the state, rather than state agents. Courts rarely prosecute those currently in power for human rights violations. In civil war settings, rebels, rather than state actors, face trials. In post-authoritarian settings, courts try former authoritarian actors, but do not address crimes committed by the opposition to authoritarian rule. The dataset also reveals regional patterns of mechanism usage. Trials, lustration policies, and reparations occur most often in Europe. Non-European countries more frequently adopt truth commissions and amnesties than do their European counterparts, with a particularly high number of amnesties granted in Latin America

Authoritarianism · Context (archaeology) · Democracy · Economic Justice · Geography · Human rights · Law and economics · Opposition (politics) · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Transitional justice · Historical and Contemporary Political Dynamics · International Law and Human Rights · Law · Political Conflict and Governance

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