How to evaluate success is currently on the forefront of transitional justice theory and practice. On the one hand a comparative literature has studied the impact of transitional justice using quantifiable criteria, such as human rights and rule of law. On the other hand, a large ethnographic literature has focused on the micro level, providing critical assessments of the global export of transitional justice. This paper argues that while this critical turn is a welcome development, an unhelpful dichotomy has emerged between globally oriented comparativists and the ethnographic literature. The paper calls for a more inductive qualitative research on the normative and discursive impact of transitional justice on social and political capital on the macro level. Better integration of normative and empirical research agendas would also help generate a more holistic and contextually-sensitive research agenda that accounts for variation in transitional justice procedures and impact across contexts.
