The Decision to Prosecute: Accountability for Human Rights Violations in Chile and Argentina after Military Regimes
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- The transition from military regimes to democratic governments is a difficult one for all states, particularly those with a history of human rights abuses. This thesis explores the differences in human rights prosecutions after military dictatorships in Chile and Argentina through the lens of the following two questions: How did the quantity and judicial mechanism of prosecutions for human rights abuses in Argentina and Chile differ and what was the role of political legitimacy in the decision to prosecute? To answer the first question, details of how the prosecutorial patterns differed between the two countries are examined, including trial location, level of crime prosecuted, rank of those prosecuted, and verdict. Next, qualitative evidence from newspaper articles, speeches by public officials, and publications from international advocacy groups is used to build a causal story about how the trials were both a reconciliation tool and a political negotiation point in each country. In Argentina, democratic actors found it advantageous to heavily prosecute immediately after the transition; when democratic stability was challenged however, amnesty was granted, indicating political motivations for prosecution trends. Human rights prosecutions in Chile after the democratic transition were sparse and avoided high ranking officials. The trends were also a political compromise to protect democracy given the negotiating power of the exiting military regime. Argentina and Chile differ in their prosecution details, yet in their causal stories share a similar thread of being heavily influenced by the political repercussions that came with the trials. The story in these two countries can be used to better understand how, when, why countries use prosecutions for reconciliation as well as how to encourage accountability for human rights violations in the future.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Date created | June 4, 2019 |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Kapasi, Hana |
|---|---|
| Primary advisor | Fukuyama, Francis |
Subjects
| Subject | International Relations |
|---|---|
| Subject | human rights |
| Subject | Chile |
| Subject | Argentina |
| Subject | military regimes |
| Subject | prosecutions |
| Genre | Thesis |
Bibliographic information
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- Use and reproduction
- User agrees that, where applicable, content will not be used to identify or to otherwise infringe the privacy or confidentiality rights of individuals. Content distributed via the Stanford Digital Repository may be subject to additional license and use restrictions applied by the depositor.
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
Preferred citation
- Preferred Citation
- Kapasi, Hana. (2019). The Decision to Prosecute: Accountability for Human Rights Violations in Chile and Argentina after Military Regimes. Stanford Digital Repository. Available at: https://purl.stanford.edu/mx278vv5558
Collection
Stanford University, Program in International Relations, Honors Theses
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- Contact
- hanakapasi@gmail.com
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