Transitional justice encompasses a variety of measures devised to overcome legacies of gross human rights violations and other historical injustices. The spread of international criminal tribunals, truth commissions, inclusive alternatives to purges, and apologies represents one of the most fascinating intellectual developments in legal and social studies. What do we know about the social efficacy of transitional justice measures? This article reviews 25 studies that provided quantitative evidence about the effects of transitional justice gathered at the individual-level analysis and situates them in the context of other studies on major transitional justice interventions: truth commissions, international criminal tribunals, lustration (vetting), reparation, and apologies. The article concludes that (1) transitional justice matters in dealing with the past; (2) justice is understood as a social-political category rather than a legal category; (3) past experiences affect attitudes to transitional justice as well as its outcomes; (4) different victims have needs for different transitional justice measures; (5) the outcomes of transitional justice depend on its context and implementation; (6) truth-sharing may produce both positive and negative effects; and (7) reconciliatory measures may produce positive social effects.

This article examines major theoretical dilemmas underpinning measures of transitional justice in general and the reparation of victims of human rights violations in particular. It assesses the role of financial compensation, justice, truth-telling, forgiveness, democratization, and other factors that are assumed to heal victims of political violence. In order to test their influence, we conducted a survey of former political prisoners in the Czech Republic. Findings from our regression analyses reveal that reparation is a two-dimensional process that incorporates sociopolitical redress and inner healing. These dimensions correlate positively with financial compensation and democratization; and negatively with public truth telling, the lack of reconciliation, and continued stigmatization by neighbors. At the same time, most proxies of retributive desires are not significantly related to the outcomes of reparation. These associations are interpreted in the light of narrative accounts obtained through interviews, letters, and observations. The results indicate that individual reparation, if it is to be successful, must be an organic part of a broader policy of social reconstruction. Based on our findings, we propose a victim-oriented model of social reconstruction for transitional countries.

No abstract

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: individual, social and political empowerment of victims; decreasing the superior position of perpetrators, especially through their punishment; and a repentant gesture of perpetrators towards victims, especially by apologizing. The results of path analysis confirm that religious belief, individual, social, and political empowerment, punishment, and apology directly promote forgiveness. This enables the authors to distinguish four types of forgiveness: religious, reparatory, retributive, and reconciliatory forgiveness. They suggest that policy interventions that promote forgiveness may not be mutually exclusive as often proposed in the dilemmas of transitional justice

This article examines the effect that different policy interventions of transitional justice have on the desires of the victims of human rights violations for retribution. The retributive desires assessed in this article are conceptualized as individual, collective, and abstract demands for the imposition of a commensurate degree of suffering upon the offender. We suggest a plausible way of reducing victims' retributive desires. Instead of "getting even" in relation to the suffering, victims and perpetrators may "get equal" in relation to their respective statuses, which were affected by political crimes. The article hypothesizes that the three classes of transitional justice: (1) reparation that empowers victims by financial compensation, truth telling, and social acknowledgment; (2) retribution that inflicts punishment upon perpetrators; and (3) reconciliation that renews civic relationship between victims and perpetrators through personal contact, apology, and forgiveness; each contributes to restoring equality between victims and perpetrators, and in so doing decreases the desires that victims have for retribution. In order to test our hypotheses, we conducted a survey of former political prisoners in the Czech Republic. Results from the regression analysis reveal that financial compensation, social acknowledgement, punishment, and forgiveness are likely to reduce victims' retributive desires.