Weaponized Transitional Justice: Consequences from the Policy Making Process

Accountability is critical to modern democracy; therefore, Transitional Justice (TJ) is an inevitable component of late-coming democracies as a means of constraining authoritarianism and its legacies. While much of the existing literature focuses on how TJ is implemented or the extent to which it enhances human rights protection, this study turns attention to the policymaking process and further examines the effects of TJ by using institutional evaluation indices. The core objective of this research is to connect transitional justice with party politics. Previous studies have shown that authoritarian successor parties (ASPs) tend to hinder the adoption of TJ policies. However, far less is known about the political actors who actively promote TJ initiatives. Accordingly, this study seeks to answer the following questions: Who advocates for transitional justice? Do anti-authoritarian successor parties play a decisive role? And how is this process related to the political strength of authoritarian successor parties? In what ways do the president and prime minister's associations with these two types of parties affect TJ policies? Do these theoretical expectations depend on constitutional heterogeneity and substantive political circumstances (such as cohabitation)? Methodologically, we employ time-series analysis and cross-national empirical data to capture the dynamic relationship between party competition and the development of transitional justice policies over time.