Transitional Justice in Balance ─ Comparing Processes, Weighing Efficacy

"This volume offers new insights ans perspectives, seeking to answer the crucial questions: How does one judge or evaluate transitional justice?' The author have made an important addition to empirically grounded theory of transitioanl justice. This highly readable volume will be accessible to scholrly audiencesin diverse disciplines, as well as t ononacademic, general audiences, including journalists, policy analysts, and all those interested in foreign affaries and justice issues."---Ruti Teitel, Ernst C. stiefel Professor of Comparative Law, New York Law School

In the first project of its kind to compare multiple combinations of mechanisms across regions, countries and time, Transitional Justice in Balance: Comparing Processes, Weighing Efficacy systematiclly analyzes the claims made in the literature using a vast array of data, which the authors have assembled in the Transitional Justice Data Base. Trials, truth commssions, amnesties, reaprations, and lustration policies--- the main focus of the literature to date---are among the 854 transitional justice mechanisms, Which were implemented in 161 countries from 1970 to 2007 and included in this database. The authors use the datavbase to explore the adoption of transitional justice and its deffectiveness in achieving its priamray goals of strengthening democracy and reducing human rights violations. This book summarizes the finding s and develops a new theoretical aproach to transitional justice, groundded in cross-national empiricical analysis.

Tricia D. Olsen and Andrew G. Reiter are PhD candidates in political science at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Leigh A. Payne, a former granteee at the United States Institute of Peace, is a professor of sociology and Latin Americna studies at Oxford University and visiting professor of political science and global studies at the university of Minnesota.