Abstract
The main aim of this volume is to examine the impact of transitional justice mechanisms on the development of peace and democracy. In its seven chapters, the authors consider and compare experiences of four different contemporary transitional justice cases: post-authoritarian Uruguay and Peru as well as post-conflict Rwanda and Angola through the analyses of trials, reparations, truth commissions and amnesties implementation.
The first two and the last chapters offer the review of the transitional justice literature, detail the methodological and theoretical assumptions of the case studies and draw conclusions from the research. The authors indicate that the literature presents general claims concerning the objectives and anticipated positive impact of diverse transitional justice mechanisms irrespective of their implementation contexts. They shed light on not noticing the use of the mechanisms as a part of a universal toolkit with insufficient knowledge of contextual factors in the countries where they are applied. Substantially, the review delves into difficulties which have to be overcome in studies on transitional justice mechanisms such as variables selection and hypotheses formulation. The work contributes to the studies on transitional justice through this comprehensive review of variables. Then, it provides one major criticism that the literature avoids offering a cross-culture analysis on the impact of transitional justice. Nonetheless, this remark is unspecific to the field and concerns the case study approach in general. Although this book shows the cross-cultural study, it encompasses only four case studies which constitute too small number to formulate general conclusions. Additionally, the authors discern that generally the researchers formulate different conclusions. In fact, this is quite obvious and does not undermine current studies because it is the result of adopting various research problems and analytical assumptions. Furthermore, the discussion omits the methodological evaluation of the selected works.
Yet, the authors convincingly reveal pitfalls connected with exploring their research field such as the level of the CIRI Human Rights Dataset applicability, the typology of peace formulation and the semantic field of democracy determination. Notwithstanding, the methodological assumptions of the case studies are insufficient to accomplish the book’s aim because they fail to employ intersubjectively applicable analytical tools such as logistic regression. Although the variables are depicted well, relationships between them still demand to be analysed. Indeed, confounders and control variables should be included and discussed there in order to increase the levels of the research results’ accuracy and verifiability. Significantly, the impact should be measured using these variables and extra tools rather than described on the basis of monographs and sources. This reservation sheds light on another doubt about the subject of the study because sometimes it is a set of events, sometimes a scientific discourse about them. Yet, conclusions on them are not captured separately. It would be also useful to determine semantic fields of the analytical categories which were employed in the studies such as democratic culture (p. 36) and political culture (p. 141) in order to increase the degree of the arguments precision.
The four case studies concerning Uruguay, Peru, Rwanda and Angola are conducted properly on the factual level and systematically according to the same assumptions. Arguably, they contribute to the field introducing the research fields’ distinctive features. They resolve the problem whether, when and how transitional justice processes make a difference in respect of securing and maintaining peace after periods of violent conflict or redemocratisation. The authors state that the national, regional and global contexts are the most relevant determinants of the impact of transitional justice processes and indicate contextual obstacles and limitations of these processes. They argue that only Uruguay has achieved a stage of positive peace and a maximalist level of democracy, which consists in the establishment of democratic consolidation, the rule of law and a high degree of respect for human rights. This country has initiated manifold transitional justice mechanisms during 20 years after the transition. There has been no international involvement in the transitional justice process in Uruguay, but the Inter-American Court of Human Rights has influenced the government’s impunity versus accountability dilemma. Peru has reached liberal peace and an intermediate degree of democratic consolidation. This country has implemented diverse transnational justice mechanisms, for example, trials, a truth commission and reparations for victims. Rwanda has attained partial liberal peace and a minimal level of democracy which means the achievement of electoral democracy. This country has established a massive transitional justice programme which encompassed local gacaca courts and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. Angola has come to a negative peace and is acknowledged as a minimal democracy. There no endeavours have been made to determine truth or justice for past violations. According to these claims, the authors formulate explanatory frameworks which contribute to the studies on transitional justice.
Overall, although they provide a valuable look at the field, it would be useful to improve the methodological assumptions of these analyses. Finally, the volume is recommended to scholars interested in peacebuilding, human rights and democratisation because it presents comparative approach towards transitional justice, peace and democracy, quality depiction of the research field as well as worth verifying inventive explanatory frameworks.