Measuring Transitional Justice in Latin America

Abstract

This paper introduces a new dataset that measures the effectiveness of domestic efforts to pursue prosecutorial transitional justice strategies. The author develops an outcome-based measurement of successful conviction for transitional countries in Latin America in the period between 1979 and 2004, based on the number of convictions and the level of official convicted. An examination of the correlation between effective prosecution and human rights improvement suggests that aggressive prosecution is not essential for transitional countries to realize improvements in protection of human rights. This research design builds on the efforts of Kathryn Sikkink and Carrie Bototh Walling to develop proxies for measuring the extent and impact of judicial trials. However, this paper argues that Sikkink and Walling’s measurement, based on the duration of attempts to prosecute, is not a meaningful proxy for trail effectiveness and is beset by methodological flaws.