Research

Retroactive Justice and Criminal Violence in New Democracies: A Cross-National Study of Third Wave Democracies

Faculty Research Grant
Grant Year
2012-2013

This is a study that seeks to explain why some countries that democratized in the past three decades have plunged into major waves of crime and violence while others have entered into a path of peace and development. The central argument I make is that countries that adopted mechanisms of retroactive justice and introduced major reforms of the security forces and judicial institutions of the authoritarian era were more likely to enter into a trajectory of peace and development than those that failed to reform their security forces and left major violations of human rights unpunished.