What makes transitional justice possible? An analysis of the Spanish case

ABSTRACT

The main purpose of this research is to identify the determinants that intervene in the transitional justice choices made in general, and those made in the Spanish case in particular. The construction of a linear regression model containing 83 transitions was developed to identify the significant explanatory factors in the transitional justice choices. The analysis enabled us to place Spain at some distance from the countries considered as successful in terms of transitional justice to classify it as an exception that is not adequately explained by the general model, while also identifying the main reasons for this.

KEYWORDS:

• Transitional justice
• democracy
• drivers
• Spain
• OLS model

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Anna Macdonald, ‘Local Understandings and Experiences of Transitional Justice: A Review of the Evidence’, The Justice and Security Research Programme 6 (2013): 1–98.

2 Tricia D. Olsen, A. Payne Leigh, and Andrew G. Reiter, Transitional Justice in Balance: Comparing Processes, Weighing Efficacy (Washington, WA: United States Institute of Peace Press, 2010).

3 Luc Huyse, ‘Justice after Transition: on the Choice’s Successor Elites Make in Dealing with the Past’, Law & Social Inquiry 20, no. 1 (1995), doi:10.1111/j.1747-4469.1995.tb00682.x (accessed October 3, 2023).

4 Olsen, Payne, and Reiter, Transitional Justice in Balance.

5 Jack Snyder and Leslie Vinjamuri, ‘Trials and Errors: Principle and Pragmatism in Strategies of International Justice’, International Security 28, no. 3 (2003/2004): 5–44.

6 Olsen, Payne, and Reiter, Transitional Justice in Balance.

7 Paloma Aguilar and A. Leigh Payne, Revealing New Truths about Spain’s Violent Past (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016).

8 Grace Akello, ‘Reintegration of Amnestied LRA Ex-Combatants and Survivors' Resistance Acts in Acholiland, Northern Uganda’, International Journal of Transitional Justice 13, no. 2 (2019): 249–671.

9 Melanne A. Civic and Michael Miklaucic, Monopoly of Force: The Nexus of DDR and SSR (Washington, D.C: Center for Complex Operations Institute for National Strategic Studies, 2011).

10 Pamina Firchow, ‘The Implementation of the Institutional Programme of Collective Reparations in Colombia’, Journal of Human Rights Practice 6, no. 2 (2014): 356–75.

11 Jeremy Sarkin, ‘The Interrelationship and Interconnectedness of Transitional Justice and the Rule of Law in Uganda: Pursuing Justice, Truth, Guarantees of Non-repetition, Reconciliation and Reparations for Past Crimes and Human Rights Violations’, Hague Journal on the Rule of Law 7, no. 1 (2015): 111.

12 Alexandra Barahona de Brito, Carmen González-Enríquez, and Paloma Aguilar, The Politics of Memory: Transitional Justice in Democratizing Societies. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).

13 Chandra Lkena Sriram, ‘Beyond Conflicts and Pursuing Accountability: Beyond Justice versus Peace’, in Advances in Peacebuilding: Critical developments and approaches (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 279–93.

14 Elin Skaar and Eric Wiebelhaus-Brahm, ‘The Drivers of Transitional Justice: An Analytical Framework for Assessing the Role of Actors’, Nordic Journal of Human Rights 31, no. 2 (2013): 127–148.

15 Daniel Brinks and Varun Gauri, Courting Social Justice. Judicial Enforcement of Social and Economic Rights in the Developing World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008).

16 Barahona de Brito, González-Enríquez, and Aguilar, The Politics of Memory.

17 Kathryn Sikkink, The Justice Cascade: How Human Rights Prosecutions are Changing World Politics (New York: W.W. Norton & Co, 2011).

18 Onora O'neill, ‘A Kantian Approach to Transitional Justice’, in The Cosmopolitanism Reader, ed. Garrett W. Brown and David Held (Cambridge: Polity, 2010), 45–61.

19 Pablo De Greiff and Roger Duthie, Transitional Justice and Development: Making Connections (New York: Social Science Research Council, 2009).

20 Lisa Laplante, ‘Transitional Justice and Peacebuilding: Diagnosing and Addressing the Socioeconomic Roots of Violence through a Human Rights Framework’, International Journal of Transitional Justice 2 (2009): 331.

21 Neil Kritz, Transitional Justice. How Emerging Democracies Reckon with Former Regimes (Washington: United States Institute for Peace, 1995).

22 Elin Skaar, Jemima García-Godos, and Cath Collins, Transitional Justice in Latin America: The Uneven Road from Impunity towards Accountability (London and New York: Routledge, 2016).

23 Olsen, Payne, and Reiter, Transitional Justice in Balance.

24 Genevieve Bates, Cinar Ipek, and Monika Nalepa, ‘Accountability by Numbers: A New Global Transitional Justice Dataset (1946–2016)’, Perspective on Politics 18, no. 1 (2020): 161–184, doi:10.1017/S1537592719000756 (accessed October 3, 2023).

25 Elin Skaar, ‘Reconciliation in a Transitional Justice Perspective’, Transitional Justice Review 1, no.1 (2013): 54–103, https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/tjreview/vol1/iss1/10 (accessed October 3, 2023).

26 United Nations, What is Transitional Justice? A Backgrounder, 2008, 3, https://www.un.org/peacebuilding/sites/www.un.org.peacebuilding/files/documents/26_02_2008_background_note.pdf (accessed October 3, 2023).

27 Ibid, 4.

28 Olsen, Payne, and Reiter, Transitional Justice in Balance.

29 Ibid.

30 Ibid.

31 Ibid.

32 Olsen, Payne, and Reiter, Transitional Justice in Balance, 15.

33 Francesca Lessa, Leigh A Payne, and Gabriel Pereira, ‘Overcoming Barriers to Justice in the Age of Human Rights Accountability’, Human Rights Quarterly 37 (2015): 728–50.

34 Leigh A Payne and Kathryn Sikkink, ‘Transitional Justice Database and the Transitional Justice Research Collaborative’, https://transitionaljusticedata.com/ (accessed October 3, 2023); Lessa, Payne, and Pereyra, Overcoming Barriers to Justice.

35 To remove the effect of different scales, all variables are standardised as follows: z = (x_i –x_min)/(x_max–x_min).

36 The weighting process was based on discussions with the following experts in TJ: Andre G. Reiter, Josep M. Tamarit, Lorena Paola Avila and Farid Benavides.

37 The decision of giving the highest weight to trials is also coherent with the relevance given to this mechanism by most scholars and NGOs, in considering that they contribute to ‘reconstructing a morally just order and conform more easily than other mechanisms to longstanding ideals of retributive justice’, thereby ‘achieving the highest degree of accountability and justice possible’, ‘establishing legitimacy and rule of law for the new government’ and ‘promoting a more democratic culture’. Olsen, Payne and Reiter, Transitional Justice in Balance. A very similar criteria is adopted by Skaar, García-Godos and Collins to evaluate the progress toward accountability of Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, El Salvador, Guatemala, Peru and Colombia. On the basis of expert interviews, they develop a ranking of preferable combinations of TJ mechanisms where trials get the highest score (10 points) and amnesties the lowest (1 point). Elin Skaar; Jemima García-Godos, and Cath Collins, Transitional Justice in Latin America.

38 The sources which are not specified are directly extracted from Olsen, Payne, and Reiter, Transitional Justice in Balance.

39 Monty G Marshall, Ted Robert Gurr, and Keith Jaggers, Polity IV Project: Political Regime Characteristics and Transitions 1800–2016 (Vienna: Center for Systemic Peace, 2017), http://www.systemicpeace.org/inscrdata.html (accessed October 3, 2023).

40 Paloma Aguilar, ‘Justice, Politics and Memory in the Spanish Transition’, in The Politics of Memory and Democratization, ed. Alexandra Barahona De Brito (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 92–118.

41 Ibid.

42 Olsen, Payne, and Reiter, Transitional Justice in Balance.

43 Marshall, Gurr, and Jaggers, Polity IV Project.

44 Olsen and Payne, Transitional Justice Database.

45 United Nations Treaty Collection. Chapter IV Human Rights. 1. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, 2020a, https://treaties.un.org/Pages/ViewDetails.aspx?src=IND&mtdsg_no=IV-1&chapter=4&clang=_en (accessed October 3, 2023).

46 Ibid.

47 United Nations Treaty Collection. Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, 2020b, https://treaties.un.org/Pages/ViewDetails.aspx?src=TREATY&mtdsg_no=XVIII-10&chapter=18&clang=_en (accessed October 3, 2023).

48 The last year in which ratification of the three conventions abovementioned obtained one point was 2004, because we considered a period of at least three years for the international ratification to be translated into real effect for the state, considering that mechanisms (dependent variable) were accounted for until 2012.

49 World Bank (n.d), World Bank Indicators, https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD (accessed October 3, 2023).

50 To obtain meaningful results, one point was given to the first and the second GDP per capita average (Germany and Slovenia), in considering that both countries exceeded the minimum economic threshold and the large distance in terms of GDP per capita between Germany and the rest of the countries.

51 In Olsen, Payne, and Reiter’s analysis, both democratic experience and repression variables are significant in three out of five TJ mechanisms.

52 In Olsen, Payne, and Reiter’s analysis, both democratic experience and repression variables are significant in three out of five TJ mechanisms.

53 While the Transitional Justice Index in Models 1 and 3 ranges from 0 to 19 and from 0 to 17, respectively, its value ranges from 0 to 6 in Model 3.

54 Paloma Aguilar and Leigh A. Payne, El Resurgir del pasado en España: Fosas de víctimas y confesiones de verdugos (Madrid: Taurus, 2018).

55 Josep M. Tamarit, ‘Memoria histórica y justicia transicional en España: el tiempo como actor de la justicia penal’, Anuario Iberoamericano de Derecho Internacional Penal 2 (2014): 43–65, doi:10.12804/anidip02.01.2014.02 (accessed October 3, 2023).

56 Georgina Blackeley, ‘Evaluating Spain’s Reparation Law’, Democratization 20, no. 2 (2013): 240–59, doi:10.1080/13510347.2011.650912 (accessed October 3, 2023).

57 Ebru İlter Akarçay and Bilgen Sütçüoğlu, ‘Multilevel Governance in Post-transitional Justice: The Autonomous Communities of Spain’, Partecipazione e Conflict 13, no. 3 (2020): 1521–38, doi:10.1285/i20356609v13i3p1521 (accessed October 3, 2023).

58 Roldán Jimeno, Amnesties, Pardons and Transitional Justice: Spain’s Pact of Forgetting (New York: Routledge, 2018), https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315107950; Vincent Druliolle, ‘Recovering Historical Memory: A Struggle against Silence and Forgetting? The Politics of Victimhood in Spain’, International Journal of Transitional Justice 9, no. 1 (2015): 316–35, https://doi.org/10.1093/ijtj/ijv008; and Jonah S. Rubin, ‘Transitional Justice against the State: Lessons from Spanish Civil Society-Led Forensic Exhumations’, The International Journal of Transitional Justice 8, no. 1 (2014): 99–120, https://doi.org/10.1093/ijtj/ijt033.

59 Tamarit, Memoria histórica.

60 Rafael Escudero, ‘Road to Impunity: The Absence of Transitional Justice Programs in Spain’, Human Rights Quarterly 36, no. 1 (2014): 123–46.

61 Asociación para la Recuperación de la Memoria Histórica (n.d), Querella Argentina, http://memoriahistorica.org.es/querella-argentina/ (accessed October 3, 2023).

62 Iván Escobar, ‘Neither Oblivion nor Reconciliation: an Analysis of Post-Francoist Spanish Historical Memory and Transitional Justice’, Revista Historia Autónoma 22 (2023): 97–120, https://doi.org/10.15366/rha2023.22.006 (accessed October 3, 2023).

63 Ibid.

64 Ibid.

65 Olsen, Payne, and Reiter, Transitional Justice in Balance.

66 Ibid, 74–5.

67 Calculated as the difference between the level of TJ really achieved and the estimated level.

68 The lower estimated error observed in table B4 for the Spanish case can be justified by the lower weight given in Model 2 to the mechanisms that were not implemented in Spain (trials, truth commission and lustration policies).

69 Paloma Aguilar, ‘Justice, Politics and Memory in the Spanish Transition’, in The Politics of Memory and Democratization, ed. Alexandra Barahona De Brito (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 92–118.

70 Jack Snyder and Leslie Vinjamuri, ‘Trials and Errors: Principle and Pragmatism in Strategies of International Justice’, International Security 28, no. 3 (2003): 5–44.

71 Aguilar and Payne, Revealing New Truths.

72 Chandra L. Sriram, ‘Justice as Peace? Liberal Peacebuilding and Strategies of Transitional Justice’, Global Society 21, no. 4 (2007): 579–91.

73 Aguilar, Justice, Politics and Memory.

74 Paloma Aguilar, ‘Collective Memory of the Spanish Civil War: The Case of the Political Amnesty in the Spanish Transition to Democracy’, Democratization 4, no. 4, (1997): 88–109, https://doi.org/10.1080/13510349708403537.

75 Josep M. Tamarit, Historical Memory and Criminal Justice in Spain. A Case of Late Transitional Justice (Cowley Road: Intersentia, 2013).

76 Ignacio Sánchez-Cuenca and Paloma Aguilar, ‘Terrorist Violence and Popular Mobilization: The Case of the Spanish Transition to Democracy’, Politics and Society 37, no. 3 (2009): 428–53.

77 Sophie Baby, El mito de la transición pacífica. Violencia y política en España (1975–1982) (Madrid: Akal, 2021).

78 Claudia Jünke, ‘23-F and/in Historical Memory in Democratic Spain’, Journal of Romance Studies 16, no. 3 (2016): 6–21, https://doi.org/10.3828/jrs.2016.160302 (accessed October 3, 2023); and Omar G. Encarnación, Democracy Without Justice in Spain: The Politics of Forgetting (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015).

79 Encarnación Omar, ‘Peculiar but not unique: Spain’s politics of forgetting’, Aportes 94 (2017): 149–79.

80 Javier Perez, ‘El parche autonómico y la solución federal. El Estado de las Autonomías no es una forma de Estado: no está definida en sede constituyente’, Ara, November 8, 2017, https://www.ara.cat/es/opinion/javier-perez-royo-parche-autonomico-solucion-federal_0_1902409825.html (accessed October 3, 2023); Javier Pérez and Antón Losada, Constitución: la Reforma Inevitable: Monarquía, Plurinacionalidad y Otros Escollos (Madrid: Roca, 2018).

81 Jorge Amerstar, ‘Feijóo reitera que derogará la Ley de Memoria Democrática porque atenta contra el espíritu de la Transición’, Europapress, October 5, 2022, https://www.europapress.es/nacional/noticia-feijoo-reitera-derogara-ley-memoria-democratica-porque-atenta-contra-espiritu-transicion-20221005224719.html (accessed October 3, 2023).

82 Sebastiaan Faber, ‘Exhuming Franco’, in Spain’s Second Transition (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2021), 133–49; Roldán Jimeno, Amnesties, Pardons and Transitional Justice: Spain’s Pact of Forgetting (New York: Routledge, 2018).

83 As reported by Akarçay and Sütçüoğlu, regionalist and left-wing parties have been leading memory-related policy development. Akarçay and Sütçüoğlu, Multilevel Governance.

84 Ricardo Martín de la Guardia, ‘Modelo de cambio político’, El Mundo, June 15, 2017, https://www.elmundo.es/espana/2017/06/15/59418777e2704e52488b4630.html (accessed October 3, 2023); Juan Navarro, ‘Las leyes que quiere tumbar Vox’, El País, April 13, 2022, https://elpais.com/espana/2022-04-13/mas-de-500-fosas-comunes-con-7000-represaliados.html (accessed October 3, 2023).

85 Rosa Alija, Ana Fernández, and Olga Martin-Ortega, ‘Silence and the Right to Justice: Confronting Impunity in Spain’, The International Journal of Human Rights 21, no. 5 (2017): 531–49, doi:10.1080/13642987.2017.1307827 (accessed October 3, 2023).

86 Ignacio Perotti Pinciroli, ‘Derecho de las relaciones exteriores, derecho internacional comparado y el papel de los tribunales nacionales en la justicia transicional: los casos de Argentina y España’, Anuario Colombiano de Derecho Internacional 16 (2022): 1–62, https://doi.org/10.12804/revistas.urosario.edu.co/acdi/a.12633 (accessed October 3, 2023).

87 Paloma Aguilar, Laia Balcells, and Héctor Cebolla-Boado, ‘Determinants of Attitudes toward Transitional Justice: An Empirical Analysis of the Spanish Case’, Comparative Political Studies 44, no. 10: 1397–430, https://doi.org/10.1177/0010414011407468 (accessed October 3, 2023).

88 Tamarit, Historical Memory.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Genís Galceran

Genís Galceran, Graduate in International Relations by Blanquerna- Ramon Llull University. Currently affiliated to EAE Business School.

Juan Carlos Palacios

Juan Carlos Palacios, a professor of Development Economics and Economic Policy, writes on extraverted development, dependency and inequality. Among his recent works are: ‘Development Cooperation and Dependency. An analysis of Brazilian-Spanish Cooperation in Latin America between 2010 and 2018’ (Bulletin of Latin American Research, 2023) and ‘Beyond Core and Periphery. The Role of Semiperiphery in Global Capitalism’ (Third World Quarterly, 2022).