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Justice in Times of Transition: Lessons from the Iberian Experience. CES Working Paper Series No. 173, 2009

Encarnación, Omar G. (2009) Justice in Times of Transition: Lessons from the Iberian Experience. CES Working Paper Series No. 173, 2009. [Working Paper]

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    Abstract

    A key contention of the transitional justice movement is that the more comprehensive and vigorous the effort to bring justice to a departed authoritarian regime the better the democratizing outcome will be. This essay challenges this view with empirical evidence from the Iberian Peninsula. In Portugal, a sweeping policy of purges intended to cleanse the state and society of the authoritarian past nearly derailed the transition to democracy by descending into a veritable witch-hunt. In Spain, by contrast, letting bygones be bygones, became a foundation for democratic consolidation. These counter-intuitive examples suggest that there is no pre-ordained outcome to transitional justice, and that confronting an evil past is neither a requirement nor a pre-condition for democratization. This is primarily because the principal factors driving the impulse toward justice against the old regime are political rather than ethical or moral. In Portugal, the rise of transitional justice mirrored the anarchic politics of the revolution that lunched the transition to democracy. In Spain, the absence of transitional justice reflected the pragmatism of a democratic transition anchored on compromise and consensus.

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    Item Type: Working Paper
    Subjects for non-EU documents: Countries > Portugal
    EU policies and themes > Policies & related activities > political affairs > democracy/democratic deficit
    Countries > Spain
    EU policies and themes > EU institutions & developments > institutional development/policy > historical development of EC (pre-1986)
    Subjects for EU documents: UNSPECIFIED
    EU Series and Periodicals: UNSPECIFIED
    EU Annual Reports: UNSPECIFIED
    Series: Series > Harvard University, Center for European Studies > CES Working Papers/Open Forum
    Depositing User: Phil Wilkin
    Official EU Document: No
    Language: English
    Date Deposited: 30 Oct 2009
    Page Range: p. 46
    Last Modified: 15 Feb 2011 18:17
    URI: http://aei.pitt.edu/id/eprint/11883

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