This timely book addresses the critical question of long-term accountability for human rights abuse, and shows that justice delayed is not necessarily justice denied. In Chile, Argentina, Uruguay and Peru, impunity for torture has been broken, in many cases a generation after the abuse. Through a careful comparison of Chile and El Salvador, which experienced similar types of democratic transition at similar times with different accountability outcomes, Collins explicates the dynamics of second-wave ‘post-transitional’ justice. This is a welcome addition to the literature on democratic transitions and human rights, as she highlights the importance of legal ‘private actors’, institutional dimensions of the judicial system and cumulative social learning at this later phase of consolidation-era justice. She argues that this contrasts with earlier theorists’ emphasis on international initiatives and outsider social mobilisation, especially in ‘Garzón effect’ analyses of Chile's revival of justice which consider the international prosecution of Pinochet by Spain to be the catalytic event in domestic developments rather than an accelerant of them. Collins uses a method of structured, focused comparison to document the full range of legal mechanisms, initiatives and outcomes in both Chile and El Salvador, and attempts to construct a new framework for analysing post-transitional justice worldwide.
This is a well-written, thoughtful study that advances our understanding of human rights and comparative politics. It draws ably on newer literature on the ‘justice cascade’ and the importance of judicial autonomy and jurisprudence, for example, the importance of the loopholes in the Southern Cone amnesties. Collins’ work also suggests that we should adopt a longer time horizon in assessing and supporting democratic transitions, and put more emphasis on how even pacted democratisation can empower citizens to deepen their own society's accountability (pp. 44–5). Her concluding argument for the virtues of complementarity, granting priority to domestic over international prosecutions and localising justice, is reminiscent of Sally Engle Merry's work on ‘vernacularising’ human rights.
However, there are some areas in which Post-Transitional Justice overstates its claims, and some questions it raises but cannot fully address. By generalising from merely two cases unfolding during the single period of the 1990s, Collins misses important parallels that complicate her proposed new model, such as the multiple waves and venues of post-Holocaust accountability in domestic, international, criminal and civil courts spanning over five decades. Similarly, she treats international law and the emergence of universal jurisdiction as a single event rather than an ongoing dialectic with domestic processes, reaching new levels in the new millennium. A broader regional and juridical ambit including war crimes and hybrid domestic-international tribunals, as in Cambodia, would also have strengthened her claim to establish a new model of ‘justice delayed.’
Although Collins designs her comparison carefully, there are important differences between Chile and El Salvador that may diminish the attribution of the contrasting judicial outcomes solely to the political and judicial process variables emphasised by her analysis. First, Chile's longer history of democracy and judicial development laid the foundation for the incrementalism she lauds as a successful strategy, and is a resource not available to El Salvador and not supported by Argentina's resurgence post-rupture. Second, many of the abuses in El Salvador were war crimes rather than state-sanctioned abuse of detainees, and most violations were carried out by death squads that continued to exercise coercive power throughout the trial period. By contrast, most of the violence in Chile was political persecution by official forces, which is easier to demobilise, trace and sanction. Finally, while Chile and El Salvador were comparable in stages of democratic transition, they operated in different cycles of world-historic time in terms of wider patterns of conflict resolution, inter-American dependency, and globalisation.
Post-Transitional Justice is an able analysis of two important struggles for justice that introduces a stimulating and useful new model of the forces that facilitate the rule of law. An instructive treatment of Chile's success and its insufficiently studied domestic roots is slightly undercut by overemphasising the extent to which it can be generalised. However, Collins’ work is unexpectedly complementary to that of her interlocutors in the debate on the sources of change. International law, domestic ideology and judicial public opinion are not necessarily opposed; all are reflections of socialisation. It appears that what distinguishes Chile is both this reinforcing norm change at multiple levels, and the Weberian institutional autonomy to enact it despite lingering authoritarianism. This places Post-Transitional Justice along a broader spectrum with other forms of social change, further along the arc of history.
