Transitional Justice in Balance

Summarizes the findings of analysis done on a large “transnational justice database” testing various hypotheses often seen in the literature on transitional justice, including comparisons between general efficacy of trials, amnesties, lustrations and truth commissions (maximalist, minimalists, moderates, etc.) and concluding, with reservations in general favor of a combined holistic approach.

It also attempts to evaluate the importance and impact of economic factors (cost of holding trials etc.), transition factors, the backgrounds of leaders in the new regime, etc.

I'm generally skeptical of this kind of raw statistical analysis based on large data sets that categorize and generalize upon highly complex phenomena. There are significant risks of ignoring the judgment calls made in order to simplify these various processes down to data entries in a database. It is common in the social sciences these days and at odds with the approaches favored by many historians, for example. I don't think such work is completely without value, however, and found much of its discussion and its summary of a lot of existing research on the topic of interest.