Since 1970, scores of states have created truth commissions to document political violence, yet why some countries adopt them — and why some commissions gain strong investigative powers while others do not — remains unclear.
🔎 What Was Analyzed
- Two datasets from the Varieties of Truth Commissions Project (novel, cross-national data on commissions and their features)
- Interviews with representatives of international non-governmental organizations
- Interviews with Guatemalan NGO leaders
- A focus group with Argentinian human rights advocates
- A focus group at the International Center for Transitional Justice
🧭 Core Argument and Mechanisms
- Domestic and international civil society actors are connected through a global transitional justice (TJ) network and jointly influence whether and how truth commissions are created.
- Adoption is more likely when network members can apply information and moral authority to pressure governments.
- Strong investigative powers are more likely when international experts who steward TJ best practices advise governments on commission design.
📈 Key Findings
- Network members share the burden of promoting truth commissions: domestic actors are critical for initiating adoption, while international actors shape the strength of commission mandates.
- Commissions tend to be adopted where domestic organizations can mobilize knowledge and moral claims against governments.
- Commissions tend to have stronger investigative powers where international experts actively advise and transfer best practices to policymakers.
💡 Why It Matters
This analysis reframes transitional justice uptake as a product of shared domestic–international advocacy rather than solely domestic politics or international pressure. The findings clarify how transnational networks influence both the decision to form truth commissions and the substantive design choices that determine their investigative capacity, with implications for advocates, policymakers, and scholars interested in institutional design after mass violence.
