In analyzing peace processes in postconflict societies, scholars have primarily focused on the impact of prosecutions, truth-telling efforts, and reconciliation strategies, while overlooking the importance of individual demands for reparations. The authors argue that normative explanations of...

In a much-cited recent article, Obermeyer, Murray, and Gakidou (2008a) examine estimates of wartime fatalities from injuries for thirteen countries. Their analysis poses a major challenge to the battle-death estimating methodology widely used by conflict researchers, engages with the controversy...

Truth commissions have existed as mechanisms of transitional justice in some of the societies confronted with legacies of the criminal past. The author focuses on the question of the foundational justification of the idea of a truth commission. While recognizing the complexity and importance of...

The prosecution of wrongdoers in transitional justice differs from ordinary criminal justice in that defendants can appeal to an argument from redemption: even if they admit to wrongdoing as agents of the autocratic regime during one period of its existence, they may receive lenient treatment on...

This article examines major theoretical assumptions about forgiveness by victims of human rights abuses in the context of transitional justice in the Czech Republic. The authors hypothesize that forgiveness is facilitated by restoring equality between victims and perpetrators, namely:...

This article draws on anthropological research conducted with communities in Ayacucho, the region of Peru that suffered the greatest loss of life during the internal armed conflict of the 1980s and 1990s. One particularity of internal wars, such as Peru’s, is that foreign armies do not...

How do perceptions of procedural fairness shape the preferences that citizens have for transitional justice (TJ) in postauthoritarian countries? This article uses original opinion poll data collected in Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic to investigate this question. It shows that...

Truth revelation procedures are evaluated according to various normative criteria. The authors find the concepts of false conviction and false acquittal more adequate for such evaluation than the conformity with the rule of law and apply a useful classification of truth revelation procedures...

As an instance of externally induced regime change, the postwar West German case is both highly exceptional and importantly paradigmatic; it is more usefully read as a cautionary tale than as a recipe for future action. Local circumstances, some tied to earlier patterns of social and political...