Democracy and human rights are intrinsically linked. Democracies protect and foster the state of law through the provision of constitutions, enhancement of basic personal rights, fair voting, and justice. The process of democratization therefore increases civil, political, and social rights for all citizens. As appealing such a standard characterization of the relationship of democracy and human rights is it often does not reflect the experiences of victims of former authoritarian regimes in the new democracy. How do former victims experience the process of democratization? What do they expect from the new democratic regime and how are their specific interests and identities represented and accounted for in the new state? What role does agency play for the articulation and recognition of claimants’ identities and interests? To better understand the surprisingly ambivalent and even arbitrary relation between former victims and a new democratic regime, this paper analyzes the different stages of articulation and recognition of the identities and interests of gay men after the National Socialism in Germany (between 1945 and 2010). The paper focuses theoretically on the importance of the construction of new identities, social movements, and on norm diffusion. The findings indicate that despite expectations regarding the functioning of liberal democratic rules and institutions, historical justice is neither an immediate nor automatic outcome of democratization but rather just a potential result of long-term social transformations of identities, mobilization, and norms.
