Green-Lighting Accountability: Transitional Justice and Compliance With Rulings From the Inter-American Court of Human Rights

Abstract

When do democratically-elected leaders comply with rulings from international courts? While international courts have been studied independently, little research examines their interaction with state-level transitional justice (TJ) institutions. We evaluate the incentives of post-authoritarian leaders to comply with rulings of international courts related to violence under military dictatorships. We expect leaders to be more likely to comply with international court rulings addressing authoritarian human rights violations when maximalist TJ (domestic trials and vettings) has been implemented. In contrast, we expect leaders will be no more likely to comply when minimalist TJ (amnesties) has been adopted. Using data on remedies issued by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights from 1989 to 2020 for abuses committed under military dictatorships, we find that compliance is more likely following domestic trials and vettings but amnesties have no significant effect on the likelihood of compliance, as predicted. Overall, our results suggest that international courts serve as complements for domestic TJ.

Keywords

domestic politics human rights international institutions international law

Introduction

When do democratically-elected leaders comply with rulings from international courts? Domestic institutions and organizations apply normative pressure, impose restrictions or political costs on noncompliance, and take on the burden of implementing obligations from international organizations (IOs), including international courts (Conrad and Ritter 2019; Haglund 2019; Haglund and Parente 2025; Hillebrecht 2014). While social movements, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), media, and domestic courts form constituencies favoring states’ deeper embedding in international legal regimes, leaders also contend with resistance to legalization. Court rulings can provoke public backlash, particularly if compliance with rulings requires limiting the power of popular institutions (Parente 2023; Terman 2019). Backlash against compliance goes beyond public attitudes, however. If rulings threaten the interests of powerful domestic institutions, then these institutions may attempt to prevent elected leaders’ compliance efforts (Cardenas 2007).

Compliance with international court rulings is especially fraught in post-conflict settings in which culpable actors implicated by the rulings remain powerful. In particular, authoritarian elites who have committed human rights violations often have impunity during and after transitions to democracy. Indeed, these elites’ assent is often sought and given before the transition occurs (Kim 2012). Where culpable authoritarian elites are part of what Hillebrecht (2014) calls domestic anti-compliance coalitions, a democratic transition is not sufficient for a state to fulfill its commitments under international law. Authoritarian elites can act as veto players, thwarting compliance with rulings that would threaten elites’ interests, or even going so far as to subvert democracy (Huntington 1991). The question of how to hold these elites accountable, end impunity, and deepen the rule of law after periods of conflict and political violence therefore looms large over democratically-elected leaders’ decisions to comply with international court rulings.

In this paper, we describe the conditions under which democratic leaders comply with adverse judgments from international tribunals concerning rights violations in past military dictatorships. In particular, we focus on judgments affecting authoritarian elites from a past military dictatorship for three reasons. First, military regimes, in contrast to other types of dictatorships, rely most on state repression—that is, human rights violations—as a pillar of their rule.¹ Second, the consequences of authoritarian-era military elites acting as veto players are more immediate and stark than those of authoritarian-era civilian elites: the threat of a coup and violence looms over political decisions disagreeable to military elites (Svolik 2013). Third, despite the dire consequences for democracy if military elites threaten a coup, these elites’ political power is difficult to observe directly. Whereas authoritarian-era civilian elites “marshal their de facto power and organizational capacity” through “political parties [that give] elites a vehicle for political renovation and representation”, military elites marshal their power through the more latent “military autonomy” (Albertus 2019, 731).

Because the institutional power of military elites is difficult to observe, leaders run the risk of triggering their intervention in politics should they comply with an adverse judgment against a still-influential coercive apparatus. We argue that domestic transitional justice (TJ) provides leaders an informative indicator of the armed forces’ institutional power. Maximalist TJ—human rights trials and purges of military perpetrators from the prior dictatorship—indicates that these elites are institutionally weak. Trials and purges, when they occur, tend not to destabilize democracy and instead deepen domestic rule of law and human rights protections (Sikkink and Walling 2007). Maximalist TJ therefore green-lights a path for leaders to comply with adverse judgments. Minimalist TJ, such as amnesties, indicates that these elites’ influence remains largely intact. Compliance with an adverse judgment is therefore no more likely than if elites retained impunity without a formal amnesty.

Using data on compliance with adverse judgments handed down by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR), we test the argument’s expectations. The Inter-American human rights system is among the most legalized in the world, with 21 states in Latin America having adopted its jurisdiction.² Moreover, the region experienced extensive human rights violations under military dictatorships in the latter half of the twentieth century. In this crucial case for our argument, we draw on a dataset of compliance with 2,495 remedies and identify those remedies related to human rights violations under military dictatorship. Using discrete-time event history models, we estimate the relationship between maximalist and minimalist TJ measures and compliance with remedies.

We find a consistent, positive, and statistically significant relationship between maximalist TJ and compliance with orders from the Inter-American Court. Human rights trials of high-ranking military dictatorship-era state agents and purges are associated with a higher likelihood of compliance. The results are substantively meaningful: the likelihood of compliance with a remedy order in a given year is as low as 5.5 percent if there have been no trials initiated. This figure rises to about 6.5 percent if there have been 10 trials initiated and 10.7 percent with 41 trials initiated. These figures correspond to a decrease in 9 years to expected compliance (when moving from 0 trials to 41 trials). For vettings, the expected probability of compliance is 5 percent (20 years) in a country with no vettings. This figure rises to 11 percent (9 years) if a vetting policy has been adopted. As predicted, we find no significant relationship between amnesties and the likelihood of compliance. The results suggest the implementation of trials and purges complement the demands of international courts. In particular, weakening the institutional power of a domestic anti-compliance coalition may be an important precondition for the ability of leaders to deepen their human rights commitments.

Little past research has quantitatively studied the link between domestic TJ and compliance with IO rulings. We argue that this intersection is critical to understanding the full picture of justice and human rights in new democracies. As we argue in this paper, leaders use domestic processes as cues about latent support for human rights protections. Without taking these processes into account, we understand only a portion of the incentives driving leaders’ decisions to comply with IO rulings. Likewise, research that focuses only on domestic TJ misses how international actors like the Inter-American Court of Human Rights put pressure on states to adopt TJ. Our research also suggests that not all new democracies are the same with respect to their commitment to human rights. Previous research indicates that new democracies will comply with regional human rights court recommendations at a faster rate than old democracies, as a signal of commitment to human rights reform to both the international community and potential domestic challengers (Grewal and Voeten 2015). However, we find that previous variation in the type and frequency of transitional justice mechanisms shapes human rights respect in these regimes. Our contribution here is to develop a more comprehensive understanding of how domestic and international processes shape each other and to provide an explanation for variation in compliance among new democracies.

Compliance in the Shadow of Military Power

When an international tribunal hands down an adverse judgment, leaders in the implicated state determine whether to comply.^3,4 The necessity of a compliance decision implies that adverse judgments are handed down to states that have previously accepted the tribunal’s jurisdiction. We are interested in explaining compliance with judgments pertaining to human rights violations committed during a past military dictatorship. Compliance with these judgments therefore requires a current government to provide remedy for damages the leaders or agents of a previous military-led government incurred.

There is a large literature on the determinants of compliance with IOs, including international courts. One determinant of compliance is an attempt to increase the state’s international legitimacy, particularly regarding respect for human rights. Other states may use trade restrictions and sanctions against a noncompliant state, creating economic difficulties that may outweigh the cost of compliance with the courts (Hafner-Burton 2010). Thus, complying with the decisions of international tribunals may create the appearance of protecting rights (Hillebrecht 2014). However, this compliance is generally limited to the least punitive aspect of a ruling, such as reparations to victims of past human rights violations (Murray 2020). In addition to international pressure, therefore, deepened compliance requires supportive domestic coalitions (Dai 2007).

Domestic actors may incentivize leaders to comply with tribunals’ adverse judgments. First, human rights NGOs pressure governments to implement the terms of judgments. Haglund (2019) argues that “advocates use the adverse judgment as a focal point around which to mobilize for human rights policy changes. Domestic audiences can mobilize through formal or informal political channels to punish the executive for failing to respond to the rights violations brought to light by the Court” (613). Second, leaders may want to appear to their constituents as respecting human rights. Domestic audiences often expect rights protections, increasing the risk of dissent if governments do not codify such protections (Conrad and Ritter 2019; Ingram 2008). When public support for complying with an adverse judgment is high, leaders are more likely to comply with such rulings in order to avoid losing approval from the public (Parente 2023). Leaders are also more likely to comply if the type of victims in the judgment, such as women and children, elicit greater public sympathy (Haglund and Parente 2025). These incentives heighten in proximity to elections as compliance can boost leaders’ chances of keeping office. Third, judicial independence shapes a leader’s ability and incentive to comply with adverse judgments from international tribunals (Cardenas 2007). Domestic courts, when free from military or political influence, are more likely to cooperate with rulings that involve reform of the legal system (Bailliet 2013). A combination of normative pressure and pro-compliance institutional coalitions would therefore be expected to raise leaders’ likelihood of compliance.

Pressure for compliance with tribunals’ rulings does not go without domestic opposition. Just as Hillebrecht (2014) argues for the importance of pro-compliance institutional coalitions, there may also exist anti-compliance institutional coalitions. Anti-compliance coalitions put cross-pressures on leaders who must weigh their power when determining the political consequences of compliance (Cardenas 2007). Anti-compliance pressure may originate from political parties, media, and NGOs just as pro-compliance pressure originates from other such actors. Public opinion may also add to an anti-compliance coalition (Terman 2019). If public support for the institutional actor implicated in the ruling is high, compliance would weaken the leader’s political position and is therefore less likely (Hillebrecht 2014; Parente 2023). In Latin America, the military is the institutional actor most often (in 40 percent of decisions) implicated in judgments from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (Parente 2023, 120).⁵ The armed forces’ popularity makes compliance with judgments against them unwise for executives, particularly in election years.

While executives are wary of electoral punishment for complying with an adverse judgment implicating a popular military, leaders must also reckon with the military’s institutional power—the extent to which the military acts a domestic veto player—when deciding whether to comply. In the cases of interest for this paper, new democracies previously experiencing military dictatorship, civilian leaders during the transition to and consolidation of democracy work to curtail military veto-player power, provide legal frameworks to check future exercises of that power, and establish civilian control of defense institutions by removing entrenched authoritarian-era elites (Albertus 2019; Pion-Berlin and Martínez 2017). If the military remains a domestic veto player, it can credibly threaten intervention in politics should a leader’s decision threaten its interests.⁶

Two cases from South America exemplify the pattern of militaries retaining institutional power under democracy. In Peru, after the end of the military-backed dictatorship of Alberto Fujimori in 2000, the new democratic government sought to increase civilian control of the military: naming a civilian as Minister of Defense, giving that individual the title of Supreme Head of the Armed Forces, removing military prerogatives over setting security budgets, and subjecting military operations to judicial oversight (Avilés 2009). However, the military subverted these attempts at civilian control, slow-walking and even defying orders to carry out operations in Peruvian territory. By 2010, it used this leverage to win back much of the institutional power it lost in the first years after Fujimori (Jaskoski 2012). In Brazil, the armed forces gained power through managing security in Rio de Janeiro, replacing a civilian Minister of Defense, and gaining cabinet seats in the administration of President Jair Bolsonaro. Overall, in the late 2010s to early 2020s, the military asserted its authority over governance to a degree not seen since the end of the country’s military dictatorship in the 1980s (Littlefield and Block 2023).

Assessing Elite Weakness for Compliance Decisions

How do leaders assess the armed forces’ institutional power when deciding to comply with adverse judgments implicating authoritarian-era military elites? Military leaders at times maintain institutional control in domestic politics even after a transition to democracy. Sometimes democratically-elected leaders can use these observable indicators to assess their ability to comply with decisions requiring remedies for human rights violations committed by security forces. For example, a smaller number of military officers in an executive’s cabinet (or the complete absence thereof) may indicate the armed forces’ political weakness and the increased latitude for civilian leaders to act against the military’s institutional interests (White 2021). However, it is often the case that the institutional power of the military is difficult to observe directly. Military elites may lack formal control of institutions, but their continued influence may prevent civilian leaders from challenging their interests. For example, in a military tutelage described by Przeworski (1988) and Svolik (2013), the military lacks formal control of institutions, yet civilian leaders do not challenge military preferences for fear of triggering an intervention in politics should they do so. As President Dina Boluarte of Peru noted following accusations of human rights violations by the military, “[the Armed Forces] have their own law and protocols. Who do they comply with? Their commanders. We don’t have any power over them” (Rebaza 2023). Accordingly, Peru in the mid-2010s defied Inter-American Court orders requiring payment of reparations to individuals its military has labeled terrorists (Sandoval 2020, 85). Even when the military maintains institutional power, the extent to which it will be able to block domestic efforts for accountability remains uncertain until tested.

The strength of authoritarian-era elites in the military is therefore a latent characteristic that is difficult for democratically-elected leaders to observe at the moment of a sensitive compliance decision.⁷ Complicating leaders’ decision-making is that authoritarian elites’ strength must be weighed relative to the strength of democratic, pro-compliance domestic political actors. Cardenas (2007) argues compliance decisions hinge on whether anti-compliance forces (in this case, authoritarian-era elites) or pro-compliance forces have greater institutional power. The institutional power of pro-compliance forces depends on their presence and control of the judiciary, legislature, and political parties, as well as their backing by non-state actors such as NGOs and media (Hillebrecht 2014). Public opinion can also weigh in favor of compliance, reinforcing a democratically-elected leader if the actors penalized by a compliance decision were to resist the costs imposed on them (Parente 2023).

Given this uncertainty, democratic leaders need an indicator to assess the latent characteristic of authoritarian-era elite weakness.⁸ Evaluating elites’ actions under a comparable prior situation could provide a reliable indicator of their reaction to a planned compliance decision. Domestic transitional justice (TJ) mechanisms—“formal and informal procedures implemented…around the time of transition out of an oppressive or violent social order, for rendering justice to perpetrators” (Nalepa 2022, 13)—offer an indicator meeting both criteria. The decision to implement these mechanisms is comparable in that the rendering of justice to perpetrators of violence and oppression imposes costs on authoritarian-era elites just as compliance would. The decision is prior because domestic transitional justice tends to occur either around the transition to democracy—often being endogenous to the transition itself (Nalepa 2010)—or is a superseding policy objective of democratic governments that campaign on implementing domestic transitional justice if elected.⁹ Contending that transitional justice is an indicator that contributes to later compliance implies the two policy decisions are distinct: in other words, we do not consider tautological cases in which transitional justice policies serve as ipso facto compliance with an adverse judgment.¹⁰ In the next section, we describe how some TJ mechanisms indicate elite weakness and inform democratic leaders’ compliance decisions.

Extent of TJ and Compliance With International Tribunals

We argue that the extent of domestic TJ mechanisms implemented indicate the armed forces’ institutional power to democratically-elected leaders. There are two types of these mechanisms: criminal TJ, which includes trials of alleged perpetrators of human rights violations under dictatorship, and personnel TJ, which includes purges and transparency measures such as truth commissions and lustration (Nalepa 2022). The extent of these mechanisms varies widely from new democracy to new democracy. A maximalist approach punishes and deters by using trials and purges to sanction authoritarian-era human rights violations and their perpetrators (Kim and Sikkink 2010). A minimalist approach favors lenience over sanctions, opting for amnesties that protect perpetrators from future prosecution and political exclusion (Olsen et al. 2010).

When authoritarian-era elites are institutionally weak relative to pro-democratic forces, new democracies are more likely to adopt the maximalist approach to TJ. Huntington (1991), in examining the “third wave” of democratic transitions, identifies weak elites as key to the initiation of human rights trials. These elites may become weakened, and vulnerable to maximalist TJ, through different pathways. First, ruptured transitions, in which a new democracy replaces rather than accommodates elites and institutions from the prior dictatorship, correspond to more criminal prosecutions of alleged human rights violators in the short term (Kim 2012). Second, the mobilization of human rights activists in an institutionalized new democracy corresponds to more criminal prosecutions (Pion-Berlin 1994). These activists are part of a transnational advocacy network that has pushed for accountability for human rights violations with growing success from the 1980s onward, particularly in Latin America (Sikkink and Walling 2007). Third, elites may become weak over time, even if they were not weak at the outset of a transition. Perpetrators of human rights violations may retire from the military, the armed forces’ opposition toward punishment of these individuals may correspondingly decrease, and government officials may be more socialized into human rights norms that prescribe the punishment of culpable authoritarian elites. Maximalist TJ, including human rights trials, may therefore emerge where it did not take root immediately after a dictatorship ends (González-Ocantos 2016).

Maximalist TJ, by contrast, is a public and observable indication that a new democracy has subdued military elites’ threat to the new political order. As Skaar (1999) argues, “the outgoing regime….will accept trials only if it is too weak to resist” (1112). If elites have accepted trials and purges—that is, without destabilizing interventions in politics—then leaders update their beliefs that they can act against military elites’ preferences without triggering such interventions. The greater the number of such trials and purges, the more reliable the indication of military elite weakness and the more likely leaders are to comply with tribunals.

It could be the case, in a subtle difference from this argument, that maximalist TJ does not indicate military elite weakness so much as create it through convicting (criminal TJ) or purging (personnel TJ) authoritarian-era elites. Convicting and purging authoritarian-era elites undoubtedly weakens them, but it is not the turning point in the struggle between the two political forces. Whether to initiate maximalist transitional justice is the site of institutional conflict: that is, deciding on government policy to try or purge, and the first pre-trial detentions of elites by judicial actors. Institutionally powerful tutelary elites “[retain] the capacity to intervene to correct undesirable states of affairs” (Przeworski 1988, 61)—thwarting a trial or purge before its completion. To account for the alternative mechanism, the empirical analysis separates the initiation of criminal TJ proceedings and TJ convictions. If the mechanism presented here is correct, then the initiation of proceedings—not just convictions—would be associated with increased compliance.

Argentina illustrates how maximalist TJ indicates the weakness of authoritarian era elites and prompts compliance with international tribunals. A democratic transition in 1983 followed a violent military dictatorship that had ruled since 1976. Newly-elected president Raúl Alfonsín initiated human rights trials that generated intense opposition and threats of intervention from among the authoritarian-era elites in the armed forces (Esparza 2022). The result was the abandonment of trials. Twenty years later, however, President Néstor Kirchner enacted a maximalist TJ program. Soon after his 2003 election, he purged half the Argentine officer corps, appointed Supreme Court justices who struck down amnesty laws and paved the way for the resumption of human rights trials. Despite some public opposition, the military lacked the institutional power to resist (Brinks 2004; Pion-Berlin 2020). Hillebrecht (2014) explains how these domestic TJ advances permitted leader compliance with the Inter-American System: “riding high on the judiciary’s success in ruling against amnesty laws, Argentina sent official word to the Inter-American Commission that it would comply with its 1992 recommendation regarding accountability, and it promised to repeal its amnesty laws once and for all” (90). The decision to comply preceded any conviction of authoritarian-era elites in human rights trials.¹¹ The first two hypotheses follow:

H1a

When there have been more past domestic prosecutions for human rights violations under dictatorship, leaders will be more likely to comply with tribunals’ adverse judgments related to the dictatorship.

H1b

When there have been more past purges of authoritarian elites from government positions, leaders will be more likely to comply with tribunals’ adverse judgments related to the dictatorship.

A minimalist approach to TJ sends the opposite signal to leaders. If authoritarian-era elites remain powerful after a transition, then attempts to apply trials or purges against them will provoke intervention. To survive in the shadow of these elites’ durable power, new democracies tend to adopt amnesties (Snyder and Vinjamuri 2003, 18). So long as amnesties remain in effect and do not give way to trials or purges, leaders are more likely to maintain the belief that they will be similarly unable to threaten the interests of these elites by complying with adverse judgments. The case of Brazil illustrates how minimalist TJ indicates the strength of authoritarian-era elites. In 2010, the Brazilian Supreme Court upheld the country’s amnesty law protecting perpetrators of human rights violations from the prior military dictatorship. The court’s majority contended that the amnesty law facilitated the transition to democracy. It also asserted that the Inter-American System’s anti-amnesty norm did not apply to Brazil’s law (Roht-Arriaza 2015).

How, then, do amnesties modify a leader’s baseline likelihood of complying with an adverse judgment? Cavallaro and Brewer (2008) contend that in regions without entrenched institutional regard for human rights protections, “supranational tribunals are unlikely to enjoy the automatic implementation of their decisions, particularly when those decisions call for a significant political or financial commitment and implicate endemic human rights problems” (770). When implementing the Inter-American Court’s decisions requires enacting a tool of transitional justice, leaders are often unwilling to comply with any order that exceeds the scope of existing domestic transitional justice. With these dynamics in mind, we contend that amnesties do not affect leaders’ baseline likelihood of compliance. This is because the baseline—no amnesties, but all else equal—is a de facto amnesty. Amnesties and “doing nothing” about past human rights violations therefore signal similar levels of authoritarian-elite power (Skaar 1999, 1111). This discussion leads to the last hypothesis:

H1c

When there is a domestic amnesty in effect for human rights violations under dictatorship, leaders will be no more likely to comply with tribunals’ adverse judgments related to the dictatorship.

Data and Research Design

To evaluate the effect of TJ on the likelihood that states will comply with rulings from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR), we identify orders issued by the Court for rights violations that occurred under military dictatorships. The IACtHR began operating in 1979 following the adoption of the American Convention on Human Rights in San Jose, Costa Rica. There are 21 states that have currently accepted the contentious jurisdiction of the Court. In order for a case to reach the Court, individuals must first submit a petition to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. The Commission then decides on the admissibility and merits of the case. At this stage, the state has the option to make a friendly settlement with the alleged victims. If the state does not settle, the Commission decides that there has been a violation, and the state has accepted the contentious jurisdiction of the Court, the Commission may refer the case to the Court.¹² Once the Court receives a case, it issues its own judgment. If the Court finds that the state is guilty of the alleged rights violations, it issues a set of legally binding remedies.

We identify the sample of remedies issued by the Court between 1989 and 2023 from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights Reparations Dataset (Pérez-Liñán et al., 2024a). These data include information from 350 cases decided by the Court during this time period as reported on the Court’s official website. In total, there are 2,495 remedies in the dataset. Each remedy can be categorized as one of eight types, according to the Court’s classification system. These are restitution, rehabilitation, satisfaction, guarantees of non-repetition, investigation and sanction, indemnification, legal costs, and contributions to the Court’s assistance funds. The state will find compliance more difficult with some remedy types than others. For instance, remedies in the category of restitution require that the state restore the pre-abuse situation, for instance by releasing those who have been illegally detained or by restoring indigenous lands. On the other hand, measures of satisfaction may require the state only to acknowledge that an abuse occurred, in a newspaper article or a public memorial. Pérez-Liñán et al. (2024a) provide more details about each type of remedy.

From the full set of remedies, we identify the 425 remedies linked to rights violations that occurred under military dictatorships.¹³ These are the cases where TJ may have followed the original violation, later influencing the likelihood of compliance with the Court’s ruling. We code military dictatorships following the categorization of Geddes et al. (2014), including regimes in which the military was a leading institutional actor.¹⁴ The final sample includes remedies related to violations committed by 18 military regimes across 11 Latin American countries. Table SI.1 describes the proportion of cases in our sample by country, perpetrating agent of the human rights violation (military, police, or unspecified state agent), and type of violation.¹⁵

We track each of these remedies from the year that the Court issued a ruling issuing remedies until compliance, at which point the observation drops from the sample. If the state has not complied by 2020 (the last year for which we have data on the explanatory variables), the observation is right-censored. The dependent variable is effective full compliance. This variable is coded 1 if the state had complied with the recommendation in a given year and 0 if the state did not comply in that year. The is the variable yefc (year of effective full compliance) in the Reparations Dataset. To code this variable, coders read the resolution released by the Court that identified that full compliance had taken place. The Court typically highlights a particular event that signals full compliance and the variable is coded as the year of this event (which may precede the year the resolution was released). In robustness checks, we use the variable full, which codes the year that the resolution was passed, and a variable first compliance, which codes the first instance of partial or full compliance for a particular remedy (the first instance that one of the variables partial, full, yepc, or yefc was coded as 1). With this measure, the total sample size is 3,350 remedy-years.

Explanatory Variables

To identify instances of TJ following alleged rights violations, we turn to the TJ Evaluation Tools (TJET) data (Dancy et al. 2024). These data use the U.S. State Department’s Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, newspaper articles, primary sources, and existing data repositories to catalog human rights prosecutions and TJ mechanisms in all countries from 1970 to 2020. The dataset includes domestic criminal prosecutions for human rights and conflict-related crimes; foreign criminal prosecutions initiated by one state against nationals of another state; international criminal prosecutions by ad hoc tribunals, hybrid tribunals, and the International Criminal Court (ICC); state-sanctioned truth commissions; state-sanctioned remedies policies; state-sanctioned amnesty offers and laws; state-sanctioned vetting policies; and United Nations investigations. Importantly for our purposes, these data do not include information about remedies demanded by regional courts like the IACtHR.

Following our hypotheses, we are interested in three explanatory variables: domestic trials (H1a), purges (H1b), and amnesty (H1c). With each variable, we count the cumulative sum of instances of the TJ mechanism since the rights violation that eventually led to a case before the Court. For domestic trials (H1a), the TJET data include several categories of domestic trials. Given our theoretical argument, the most valid operationalization is the TJET category “domestic transitional human rights prosecutions of high-ranking state agents.” We label this variable Transition Trials and include three of its aspects in our hypothesis tests: the number of such trials begun, the number finished, and the number of convictions. Including finished trials and convictions excludes “failed” transitional justice in which a trial was suspended or alleged perpetrators were not convicted. If our mechanism of the initiation of maximalist TJ indicating elite weakness is correct, all three of Transition Trials Begun, Transition Trials Finished, and Transition Trial Convictions should be associated with a higher likelihood of compliance.

For purges (H1b), we employ the TJET variable Vettings, counting the number of TJ-related dismissals, bans, and lustration policies. For amnesties (H1c), we use the TJET variable Amnesties, counting the number of amnesty policies related to human rights violations.¹⁶ We discuss alternative operationalizations of our explanatory variables following the main analysis.

Figure 1 illustrates the primary independent and dependent variables in a country-year data structure. For scale comparability across countries, this figure depicts a binary indicator of whether the country carried out transitional trials of high-level state agents (purple line) as well as a binary indicator of whether IACtHR remedies reached effective full compliance (dark blue line) in eight countries in our sample: Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, El Salvador, Guatemala, Panama, Paraguay, and Uruguay. We see that each country undertook high-level trials near to or following the transition from military dictatorship to democracy. Later on, after a number of years with trials already occurring, countries begin to enter into full compliance with remedies from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. In the formal analysis below, we test whether this observed pattern holds in the full sample.

Figure 1.

Domestic trials and compliance in selected countries. Notes. These figures show the dichotomized occurrence of trials of high-ranking state agents (purple line) and dichotomized instances of effective full compliance (dark blue bar) over time for eight countries. The shaded gray rectangles represent the period when the country was a military dictatorship according to data from Geddes et al. (2014).

Confounders and Estimation

We theorize that TJ serves as an indicator for leaders about the lingering strength of the military. This knowledge informs the leader whether they can comply with rulings from the Court without backlash from military leaders that maintain power and influence in the new democracy. A challenge to the logic of our argument is the possibility that maximalist domestic TJ mechanisms do not indicate elite weakness to leaders making compliance decisions, but rather that some third factor jointly determines both maximalist TJ and compliance with international tribunals. We include several covariates in our models that could act as such a confounder.¹⁷

First, we include the electoral democracy index from the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) dataset. This variable measures the extent to which a country has free and fair electoral competition with civil society participation in a given year. The level of democracy could act as a confounder given that more democratic countries tend to be more likely to adopt domestic TJ (Kim 2012) and democratic leaders have greater incentives to comply with rulings from the IACtHR (Hillebrecht 2014). Further, this measure of electoral democracy includes two indicators for the strength of civil society: CSO (civil society organization) entry and exit, which measures the extent to which the government controls the entry and exit of CSOs into public life, and CSO repression, which measures the extent to which the government attempts to repress civil society organizations. The strength of civil society is an important driver of both maximalist TJ and compliance, given that pro-compliance constituencies in civil society can counter pressure from the military against compliance (Hillebrecht 2014; Parente 2023).

Similarly, we control for judicial independence. It may be that independent judiciaries provide the legal foundation to initiate domestic TJ processes. There is also evidence that executives are more responsive to adverse judgments from the IACtHR in countries with independent judiciaries (Bailliet 2013; Haglund 2020). We measure judicial independence using data from V-Dem (v2x_jucon). This is an index that measures the extent to which the judiciary can act independently, the executive respects the constitution, and the executive complies with domestic court rulings. Higher values indicate more independent judiciaries.

Another possible confounder is the latent level of influence that the military maintains in domestic politics. Militaries that have a high level of influence can block both maximalist domestic TJ as well as compliance. We operationalize this idea with data from V-Dem (v2x_ex_military), which captures the extent to which the chief executive’s position is controlled by the military. Specifically, this variable measures “the extent to which the appointment and dismissal of the chief executive is based on the threat or actual use of military force.” This variable ranges from 0 to 1 with higher values indicating greater control of the military.¹⁸

Next we control for GDP per capita and population. Remedies issued by the Inter-American Court are often costly, and wealthier countries should have greater capacity to comply (Chayes and Chayes 1993). Likewise, larger countries might have greater technical resources to comply. For these same reasons, wealthier and more populous countries might have a higher likelihood of adopting maximalist TJ mechanisms.

In addition to these country- and time-varying factors, we use country-level fixed effects to control for time-invariant factors that would confound the results. For instance, the distinct cultural history of each country might make the adoption of maximalist TJ or adherence to rulings from a regional organization more or less appealing. Likewise, public sentiment might vary across countries in a way that would confound the results. Country-level fixed effects rule out confounding from such unobservable, time-invariant dynamics.¹⁹

To estimate the relationship between TJ and the yearly probability of compliance, we use a discrete-time event history models following Parente (2023); Pérez-Liñán et al. (2023), and Pérez-Liñán et al. (2024a). We use a complementary log-log link function given that the outcome of compliance is binary and a relatively rare event in the sample. To flexibly address duration dependence, we include a quartic transformation of the years since the recommendation was introduced by the Court. Pérez-Liñán et al. (2023) show that a quadratic function (Carter and Signorino 2010) to represent the effect of time on compliance is inappropriate in this case. Note that this accounting of time also addresses time as a confounder. Certainly it is likely that has time goes on, both maximalist TJ and compliance become more likely as the distance from the dictatorship increases.

Main Analysis

Table 1 displays results for the test of Hypothesis 1a. Transition trials of high-ranking state agents—whether the number beginning, completing, or resulting in convictions—are associated with a statistically significant increase in the probability of effective compliance with an IACtHR remedy ruling regarding human rights violations occurring under dictatorship. Columns (1) and (2) report estimates for the number of transition trials begun. Based on Model 2, which includes control variables, the expected probability of compliance for the average observation in the sample is (holding all control variables at their observed levels) about 5.5 percent per year if the case had no trials, 6.5 percent per year if there were 10 trials, and 10.7 percent per year if there were 41 trials. We can also estimate the change in expected time to compliance (ETC) in years by taking the inverse of these figures (Pérez-Liñán et al. 2023). Accounting for right censoring, the model predicts that a country with no trials will take an average of 18 years to comply, a country with 10 trials begun will take an average of 15 years to comply, and a country with 41 trials begun will take an average of 9 years to comply. Columns (3) and (4) report coefficient estimates for the number of transitional trials finished, and columns (5) and (6) show similar effects for the number of trials with convictions. Overall, the stability of these results across model specifications and aspects of trials offers support for Hypothesis 1a.

Table 1.

Transitional justice trials and effective compliance with IACtHR

	Dependent variable
	Effective compliance
	(1)	(2)	(3)	(4)	(5)	(6)
Transition trials begun	0.013^***	0.018^***
Transition trials begun	(0.005)	(0.006)
Transition trials finished			0.023^***	0.024^***
Transition trials finished			(0.008)	(0.009)
Transition trial convictions					0.005^***	0.006^**
Transition trial convictions					(0.002)	(0.002)
Polyarchy		−0.360		−2.467		−2.117
Polyarchy		(4.793)		(4.771)		(4.738)
GDP per capita		−0.079		−0.029		−0.038
GDP per capita		(0.134)		(0.126)		(0.130)
Population		−0.002^***		−0.002^**		−0.002^**
Population		(0.001)		(0.001)		(0.001)
Judicial constraints		−1.272		−0.870		−0.891
Judicial constraints		(2.163)		(2.170)		(2.163)
Military influence		−1.833		−0.987		−1.091
Military influence		(2.542)		(2.555)		(2.534)
Constant	−9.263**	−6.699	−10.057**	−7.753*	−9.622**	−7.320*
Constant	(3.923)	(4.251)	(3.977)	(4.264)	(3.939)	(4.236)
Country FE	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
Time trend	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
Observations	2,605	2,605	2,605	2,605	2,605	2,605
Log likelihood	−570.201	−564.432	−568.800	−564.424	−569.724	−565.256

Note. ^*p < .1; ^**p < .05; ^***p < .01.

In Table 2 we report results for the tests of Hypothesis 1b and 1c. Vettings—as the operationalization from the TJET data for purges—are associated with a statistically significant increase in the probability of effective compliance with IACtHR remedy rulings regarding dictatorship-era human rights violations. Columns (1) and (2) report coefficient estimates for vettings: an increase from no vetting policies to 1 vetting policies corresponds to an increase from a 5 percent likelihood of compliance to an 11 percent likelihood of compliance. Note this explanatory variable’s range is considerably smaller than the trials variables: the maximum number of instances of vettings reported in TJET is two. The significance of the coefficient estimates across model specifications offers support for Hypothesis 1b.

Table 2.

Vettings, amnesties, and effective compliance with IACtHR (H1b/H1c)

	Dependent variable
	Effective compliance
	(1)	(2)	(3)	(4)
Vettings	0.732^***	0.775^***
Vettings	(0.276)	(0.298)
Amnesties			−0.012	−0.040
Amnesties			(0.037)	(0.041)
Polyarchy		−3.623		−3.412
Polyarchy		(4.580)		(4.641)
GDP per capita		0.238^**		0.126
GDP per capita		(0.104)		(0.105)
Population		−0.002**		−0.003***
Population		(0.001)		(0.001)
Judicial constraints		−0.285		−0.384
Judicial constraints		(2.141)		(2.128)
Military influence		−1.463		−1.651
Military influence		(2.532)		(2.564)
Constant	−10.782***	−9.785**	−9.878**	−7.711*
Constant	(3.993)	(4.304)	(3.976)	(4.321)
Country FE	Y	Y	Y	Y
Time trend	Y	Y	Y	Y
Observations	2,605	2,605	2,605	2,605
Log likelihood	−570.449	−564.624	−574.498	−567.968

Note. ^*p < .1; ^**p < .05; ^***p < .01.

Columns (3) and (4) of Table 2 report estimates for amnesties. Here, an increase in amnesties is associated with a decrease in the expected effective compliance with remedy rulings pertaining to dictatorship-era human rights violations, but these results are not statistically significant. This finding provides support for Hypothesis 1c, which predicted that amnesties do not change baseline levels of noncompliance with adverse judgments from the Inter-American Court implicating authoritarian-era elites. We return to the discussion of scope conditions for this null relationship in the discussion of results below.

For further substantive interpretation, we visualize predicted probabilities of effective compliance across explanatory variables in Figure 2. Panel (a) depicts predicted probabilities based on model results from Column (4) of Table 1, averaging the predictions from the observed values of the covariates. Finishing ten trials of high-ranking state agents for human rights violations under dictatorship is associated with an increased probability of a government coming into effective compliance with a given remedy ruling from the IACtHR by almost 17 percent in a given year (from 6 percent to 7 percent). Panel (b) depicts predicted probabilities based on model results from Column (2) of Table 2. Implementing a first TJ vetting policy, including purges, is associated with an increased probability of a government coming into effective compliance with a given remedy ruling by over 120 percent in a given year (from 5 percent to 11 percent). These results underscore that, while the coefficient estimates appear modest, they raise the probability of compliance substantially from a baseline of no maximalist TJ.

Figure 2.

Predicted probabilities of effective compliance by TJ mechanism. Notes. Predicted probability of effective full compliance by value of domestic transitional justice based on Table 1, Model 4 (left panel) and Table 2, Model 2 (right panel). 95 percent confidence intervals.

Robustness Tests

In addition to the main analysis, we conduct additional analyses to guard against several potential threats to inference.

Additional Covariates

First, we consider whether there are additional sources of confounding that we did not consider in our main models. To assess the robustness of the results, we run additional models with other possible confounders. In these models, we first add another variable measuring the lingering, latent power of the military. This variable comes from V-Dem (v2regimpgroup_5) and codes whether the current political regime relies most strongly on the military in order to maintain power. In other words, if the military were to withdraw its support, this would most strongly determine the likelihood of the regime losing power. As discussed further above, we recognize that military strength can be a confounder because it influences the leader’s ability to enact domestic TJ and comply with rulings from the Court.

Other possible confounders are the popularity of the president, the time that s/he has been in office, and whether the government is divided. More popular presidents or presidents who control both houses of the legislature may have greater leeway to enact their preferred policies, and leaders may have greater freedom to maneuver at the very beginning or end of their terms. Similarly, Parente (2023) finds that the probability of compliance varies with a leader’s proximity to an election, as their responsiveness to public pressure varies over the course of an election cycle. We control for the proportion of votes that the incumbent received in the previous election, the number of years the incumbent has served in office, and whether executive controls both houses of the legislature using data from the Database of Political Institutions (Cruz et al. 2020). Note that controlling for the number of years in office also controls for the time relative to an election, given that the countries in our sample are presidential systems with fixed election cycles. The results are robust with these added controls, as shown in Appendix Table SI.2.

Selection Effects

Another threat to inference could be a selection effect. If countries that adopted maximalist domestic TJ were systematically different—in a way that favored compliance—than countries that did not adopt maximalist TJ, our results could result from selection into TJ rather than an effect of TJ on compliance. A couple of possible pathways could generate such a selection effect. First, it could be that petitioners submit fewer cases in countries with maximalist domestic TJ. Given that petitioners would already see some level of justice taking place at the domestic level, they may not feel as much a need to submit cases in these countries. If so, it might be easier for those countries to comply because they had fewer cases to deal with overall. Another selection mechanism is that the Commission might accept fewer cases from countries with maximalist TJ. Perhaps the Commission prioritizes hearing cases from countries where there is not an existing avenue for justice and these cases are more likely to make their way to the Court. This would bias in favor of finding a positive relationship between maximalist TJ and compliance because the countries with maximalist TJ would have an easier case load with which to comply.

To check the plausibility of these pathways, we evaluate the effect of maximalist TJ on the number of cases pending at the Court and the number of cases decided by the Court each year. Although we do not observe the total number of petitions submitted each year and the proportion of these cases referred by the Commission to the Court, we can assume that, if these selection effects do exist, we would expect to see a negative relationship between maximalist TJ and Court cases. Those countries with the highest levels of domestic TJ would have the lowest case load. Actually, we find that the effect of maximalist TJ is either positive or insignificant. In simple bivariate regressions, the number of trials began has a positive and statistically significant effect on the number of ongoing cases and the number of cases decided each year. The effect of the other measures of maximalist TJ (trials finished, trial convictions, and vettings) are insignificant. These basic correlations increase our confidence that the main findings do not result from selection effects.

Empirically, we nevertheless take steps to address the possibility of selection effects. First, we highlight that we include country fixed effects in all models, thus controlling for country-level factors that might influence the probability of a country to select into domestic TJ or judges to behave with particular biases. For instance, if one country particularly values human rights in the post-dictatorship period, increasing their likelihood of wanting to comply with Court rulings, this country-level factor would be controlled for with country-level fixed effects. Second, we conduct a robustness check with a control for the number of cases pending before the Court in each year. This variable captures the fact that more petitions may have been submitted, and/or the Commission may have accepted more cases, in countries with limited domestic TJ (though we do not observe such a correlation in simple models, as discussed above). By a similar logic, we conduct another robustness check where we control for the number of remedies pending each year. It could be the case that states with maximalist TJ are given a fewer number of remedies by the Court, speeding up the process of compliance. The results with these added controls, shown in Appendix Tables SI.3 and SI.4, are robust.

Alternate Mechanism: Shifting Remedy Type

We also consider the possibility that an alternate mechanism accounts for the observed relationship between maximalist domestic transitional justice and compliance with IACtHR rulings. In our argument, maximalist transitional justice is associated with compliance because trials and purges serve as a signal to new democratic leaders that the power of former authoritarian military elites has been curtailed sufficiently to permit the implementation of international tribunals’ rulings. However, one alternative mechanism is that domestic transitional justice could affect the type of remedies IACtHR judges order. Compliance would then change as a function of the change in remedy type, rather than domestic transitional justice. This could work in two ways. First, once a new democracy has implemented trials and purges, IACtHR judges respond to these domestic measures by asking for a more limited breadth of remedies such as individual measures (monetary damages) or symbolic measures. In the reverse case, as Sandoval (2020) contends, the IACtHR, could “adjudicate on reparations…by taking into account states’ views” on domestic transitional justice (89). She describes how the Court limited reparations orders in Guatemala to reconcile with the country’s more limited domestic reparations program. Another plausible mechanism is that maximalist TJ meets some of the criteria for some remedies to reach compliance. If a remedy requires that states investigate and sanction the perpetrators of rights abuses, maximalist TJ would serve, definitionally, to generate compliance, and our findings would be tautological.

We account for these possibilities with two tests. First, we rerun our main analyses after dropping from our sample all remedies that call for states to “investigate and sanction” perpetrators (type 50 in the categorization used by the IACtHR).²⁰ These remedies include “removal of all de facto and de jure barriers to effective investigation of the case and prosecution of culprits” (Pérez-Liñán et al. 2024, 4). This is the type of remedy that could either decrease in the presence of maximalist TJ—if the Court sees these remedies as a substitute for the state’s domestic TJ measures—or increase in the presence of maximalist TJ—if the Court sees the remedies as a complement to domestic TJ measures. It is also the type that could be definitionally linked to the processes of the trials themselves. Our results are robust when we exclude these types of remedies from the analysis, as shown in Tables SI.5 and SI.6.

Second, we examine whether the implementation of maximalist TJ is associated with changes in the (1) number of remedies ordered by the Court (a measure of the overall difficulty of orders) or the (2) frequency of any particular remedy type. These results are found in Table SI.7. Here, we collapse the data to include one observation for each case and regress the total number of remedies issued for that case, as well as the number of remedies from each type, on the count of transition trials, vettings, and amnesties between the year the violation occurred and the year the Court issued a decision. In general, we find that the independent variables have no significant effect on the total number of remedies and no consistent effect on the difficulty of remedy types. In general, measures of satisfaction (Type 30) and monetary reparations (Types 61, 62, and 70) have relatively low barriers to compliance. Apart from a positive correlation between amnesties and remedies demanding contributions to the Court’s assistance fund (Type 70), none of the independent variables are correlated with these types. We do find some correlations between some independent variables and a few remedy types. When we add controls for these imbalanced remedy types to our main analyses (Table SI.8), the results are robust. Note that we avoid including controls for all remedy types in the main models to avoid post-treatment bias: as discussed above, maximalist TJ (the treatment) could influence the type of remedies demanded by the Court, which in turn could influence the probability of compliance. In such a scenario——which we consider plausible——the inclusion of remedy type as a control variable introduces post-treatment bias to the estimates.

Measurement Strategy

Finally, it is possible that the results are sensitive to the measurement of the core concepts we have presented in the main analysis. We conduct several tests to increase confidence in the robustness of the results to alternative measures. First, we show that the results are robust to different operationalizations of the dependent variable. To begin, we loosen the criteria for compliance to include both partial and full compliance with IACtHR rulings, as noted by the Court. Results, reported in Tables SI.9 and SI.10 in the Online Appendix, strengthen in their substantive and statistical significance for trials and vettings. Next, we employ different operationalizations of the independent variable of human rights trials. While the primary operationalization of trials from the TJET data—transitional prosecutions of high-ranking state agents for human rights violations—is the most valid given our theoretical argument, the dataset contains other trial types that could less precisely indicate the weakness of authoritarian-era elites. These are aggregated into a combined trials measure which we employ in models with effective compliance and first compliance as dependent variables. Results, reported in Table SI.11, are robust.

As a placebo test, we also employ as an explanatory variable the type of trial in the dataset most different from transitional trials of high-ranking state agents: trials of opposition members and less prominent state agents related to low-level internal conflict. The results in Table SI.12 show trials and convictions including opposition members from low-level conflict have a mostly negative and statistically significant relationship with effective compliance for a given remedy-year. This comports with the theoretical mechanism: the continued prosecution of opposition members indicates to governments the opposite of transitional trials targeting high-level state agents, in terms of the institutional power of authoritarian-era elites.

Scope of the Sample

Finally, we evaluate the sensitivity of the results to alternative samples. Recall that the inclusion criterion for remedy-years is that the Court decisions relate to human rights violations occurring under military dictatorship according to the classification of Geddes et al. (2014). We consider an alternative classification scheme for military dictatorship from Bjørnskov and Rode (2020), which extends the Democracy and Dictatorship (DD) data Cheibub et al. (2010). The DD data have a more expansive classification of military dictatorship than GWF. Tables SI.13 and SI.14 report results for the alternative sample. In this sample, the results are generally robust.

Conclusion

In this paper, we argued that domestic leaders’ incentives to comply with decisions from international courts depend in part on the institutional strength of the actors whose interests the decisions affect. In particular, we examine the incentives of domestic leaders to comply with court-ordered remedies for human rights violations that occurred under military dictatorship. Domestic leaders are concerned with the institutional strength of authoritarian-era military elites, which is a difficult to observe latent characteristic. Maximalist TJ—domestic human rights trials of elites and purges of those elites—informatively indicates these elites’ institutional weakness, while minimalist TJ such as amnesties indicates their persistent strength. Using data on compliance with decisions from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights pertaining to military dictatorship-era human rights violations, we find a consistent, positive, and significant relationship between maximalist TJ and the likelihood of compliance with those decisions.

These findings suggest domestic TJ may be a path through which we may observe greater compliance with human rights agreements and international law at the state level. However, it is important to acknowledge the scope conditions of this argument. The Inter-American Court’s decisions are legally binding on states, increasing the incentive for states to comply. Further, the Inter-American Court is one of a limited number of international institutions that provides individuals with the opportunity to initiate cases against rights-abusing states. These scope conditions also apply to the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), which issues legally binding decisions and permits individual petitions. In the European case, then, future research could investigate whether regional variations in domestic TJ, as documented by scholars such as Nalepa (2010), have consequences for compliance with ECtHR decisions related to dictatorship-era human rights violations. With international courts or IOs designed differently than the IACtHR and the ECtHR, however, incentives for leaders to comply with international agreements would diminish.

One finding that merits further discussion was the support for Hypothesis 1c that amnesties are associated with an unchanged likelihood of compliance. The discussion preceding Hypothesis 1c suggested scope conditions for this argument. In contexts (both regional and temporal) in which there is an established respect for human rights norms, the status quo ante for leaders without any domestic TJ policies in place may be closer to compliance with adverse judgments with international tribunals. In these situations, the implementation of amnesties for perpetrators of human rights violations under dictatorship would reduce the probability of compliance. Future empirical work should extend the analysis in this paper to regions such as Europe and assess the extent to which amnesties have shaped compliance with adverse judgments of the ECtHR. A related direction for future work is the study of heterogeneity in the relationship between amnesties and compliance: leaders’ baseline willingness to comply varies between countries and over time within regions.

An important scope condition for our argument is the political context in which the human rights violations that are the subject of IACtHR rulings occurred. We have focused on violations perpetrated by military dictatorships and the enduring institutional power of elites in these regimes after a democratic transition. We argue that elites from former military dictatorships are uniquely threatened by Court remedies related to human rights violations, as these elites relied most on state repression to retain power. The threat of a military coup also makes democratically-elected leaders’ assessment of military power especially important. Yet authoritarian-era military elites’ power is more difficult to observe directly than authoritarian-era civilian elites’ power, which manifests most often through political parties. As a result, our argument about the signaling value of maximalist TJ to democratically-elected leaders applies to former military dictatorships, but less so to party and personalist regimes. Thus we expect that maximalist TJ should not correlate with a higher likelihood of effective compliance in former party or personalist regimes. To assess this possibility, we replicate the main analysis in a sample of democracies transitioned from party and personalist dictatorships, using the categorization from Geddes et al. (2014). Consistent with expectations, there is no consistent relationship between maximalist TJ and effective compliance in these regime across models and operationalizations of maximalist TJ. Future research should develop explanations about the relationship between maximalist TJ and compliance in these regime types.

Militaries may also continue to violate human rights in new democracies, leading them to be implicated in cases referred to the IACtHR. In these contexts, domestic transitional justice mechanisms would not be as strong of an indicator of the military’s institutional power. Leaders instead may rely on public support for the military to guide a compliance decision, as Parente (2023) argues. However, public support is only one dimension of the military’s power vis-a-vis civilian authorities (Pion-Berlin and Martínez 2017). Future research should consider the institutional determinants of compliance with rulings from international tribunals when the rulings pertain to perpetrators not affected by post-authoritarian transitional justice.

Future research and policy practice should also consider the conditions under which states with weak or minimal TJ mechanisms will be more likely to comply with IACtHR orders, even when the military remains powerful. Certain types of remedies may have a higher likelihood of compliance, for example, or the presence of a pro-compliance constituency might incentivize elected leaders to comply with the order, despite the presence of a powerful military due to past amnesties. From a policy perspective, identifying such conditions would pave the way for compliance even in conditions where the military continues to hold institutional power. A deeper understanding of compliance with international law in such circumstances would help facilitate states’ human rights performance in the short-to medium-term (Haglund 2019) and signal states’ abilities to “lock in” reforms and democratic stability for the long term (Hillebrecht 2014).

Supplemental Material

Supplemental Material - Green-Lighting Accountability: Transitional Justice and Compliance With Rulings From the Inter-American Court of Human Rights

Supplemental Material for Green-Lighting Accountability: Transitional Justice and Compliance With Rulings From the Inter-American Court of Human Rights by Pearce Edwards, Kelly Morrison and Chesani Askew in Journal of Conflict Resolution

Supplemental Material

Supplemental Material - Green-Lighting Accountability: Transitional Justice and Compliance With Rulings From the Inter-American Court of Human Rights

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

We thank Leonardo Gentil-Fernandes, Jillienne Haglund, Howard Liu, and participants at the 2024 annual meeting of the Peace Science Society, the 2025 annual meeting of the International Studies Association, and the University of Tennessee IR Workshop for helpful comments on previous versions of this manuscript. We also thank the editor and anonymous reviewers at the Journal of Conflict Resolution for their useful feedback.

ORCID iDs

Pearce Edwards

Kelly Morrison

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Data Availability Statement

Data and code to replicate the analysis are available on Dataverse at https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/0PZWUH ().

Supplemental Material

Supplemental material for this article is available online.

Notes

References

Albertus

Michael

. 2019. “The Fate of Former Authoritarian Elites Under Democracy.” Journal of Conflict Resolution 63 (3): 727–759.

Avilés

William

. 2009. “Despite Insurgency: Reducing Military Prerogatives in Colombia and Peru.” Latin American Politics and Society 51 (1): 57–85.

Bailliet

Cecilia M.

2013. “Measuring Compliance With the Inter-American Court of Human Rights: The Ongoing Challenge of Judicial Independence in Latin America.” Nordic Journal of Human Rights 31 (04): 477–495.

Bjørnskov

Christian

Rode

Martin

. 2020. “Regime Types and Regime Change: A New Dataset on Democracy, Coups, and Political Institutions.” Review of International Organizations 15: 531–551.

Brinks

Daniel

. 2004. “Judicial Reform and Independence in Brazil and Argentina: The Beginning of a New Millennium.” Texas International Law Journal 40: 595.

Cardenas

Sonia

. 2007. Conflict and Compliance: State Responses to International Human Rights Pressure. University of Pennsylvania Press.

Carter

David B.

Signorino

Curtis S.

. 2010. “Back to the Future: Modeling Time Dependence in Binary Data.” Political Analysis 18: 271–292.

Cavallaro

James L.

Brewer

Stephanie Erin

. 2008. “Reevaluating Regional Human Rights Litigation in the Twenty-First Century: The Case of the Inter-American Court.” American Journal of International Law 102 (4): 768–827.

Chayes

Abram

Chayes

Antonia

. 1993. “On Compliance.” International Organization 47 (2): 175–205.

10.

Cheibub

José Antonio

Gandhi

Jennifer

Vreeland

James Raymond

. 2010. “Democracy and Dictatorship Revisited.” Public Choice 143: 67–101.

11.

Conrad

Courtenay R.

Ritter

Emily Hencken

. 2019. Contentious Compliance: Dissent and Repression Under International Human Rights Law. Oxford University Press.

12.

Cruz

Cesi

Keefer

Philip

Scartascini

Carlos

. 2020. “Database of Political Institutions 2017 (DPI2020).” Inter-American Development Bank. Numbers for Development.

13.

Dai

Xinyuan

. 2007. International Institutions and National Policies. Cambridge University Press.

14.

Dancy

Geoff

Pham

Phuong

Sikkink

Kathryn

Timo Thoms

Oskar

Vinck

Patrick

. 2024. TJET Database of Transitional Justice Mechanisms, 1970-2020. Transitional Justice Evaluation Tools. https://transitionaljusticedata.org

15.

Edwards

Pearce

Gandhi

Jennifer

Grasse

Donald

. 2025. “Is Transitional Justice Blind? The Link Between Culpability and Prosecution in Argentina’s Human Rights Trials.” The Journal of Politics; Forthcoming.

16.

Escribà-Folch

Abel

Wright

Joseph George

. 2015. Foreign Pressure and the Politics of Autocratic Survival. Oxford University Press.

17.

Esparza

Gabrielle

. 2022. “The Politics of Human Rights Prosecutions: Civil Military Relations During the Alfonsín Presidency.” The Latin Americanist 66 (1): 46–64.

18.

Geddes

Barbara

Wright

Joseph

Frantz

Erica

. 2014. “Autocratic Breakdown and Regime Transitions: A New Data Set.” Perspectives on Politics 12 (2): 313–331.

19.

González-Ocantos

Ezequiel A.

2016. Shifting Legal Visions: Judicial Change and Human Rights Trials in Latin America. Cambridge University Press.

20.

Grewal

Sharanbir

Voeten

Erik

. 2015. “Are New Democracies Better Human Rights Compliers?” International Organization 69 (2): 497–518.

21.

Grossman

Claudio

. 2024. “Protecting Human Rights in the Americas: The Continuous Role of the Inter- American Commission on Human Rights.” In The Impact of the Inter-American Human Rights System: Transformations on the Ground, edited by von Bogdandy

Armin

Piovesan

Flávia

Ferrer Mac-Gregor

Eduardo

Morales Antoniazzi

Mariela

. Oxford University Press.

22.

Hafner-Burton

Emilie M.

2010. Forced to Be Good: Why Trade Agreements Boost Human Rights. Cornell University Press.

23.

Haglund

Jillienne

. 2019. “International Institutional Design and Human Rights: The Case of the Inter-American Human Rights System.” Conflict Management and Peace Science 36 (6): 608–625.

24.

Haglund

Jillienne

. 2020. “Domestic Politics and the Effectiveness of Regional Human Rights Courts.” International Interactions 46 (4): 551–578.

25.

Haglund

Jillienne

Parente

Francesca

. 2025. “The Price of Justice: Compliance and Damages Awarded by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.” Journal of Law and Courts 13: 1–24.

26.

Hillebrecht

Courtney

. 2014. Domestic Politics and International Human Rights Tribunals: The Problem of Compliance. Cambridge University Press.

27.

Huntington

Samuel P.

1991. The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century. University of Oklahoma Press.

28.

Ingram

James D.

2008. “What Is a “Right to Have Rights”? Three Images of the Politics of Human Rights.” American Political Science Review 102 (4): 401–416.

29.

Jaskoski

Maiah

. 2012. “Civilian Control of the Armed Forces in Democratic Latin America: Military Prerogatives, Contestation, and Mission Performance in Peru.” Armed Forces & Society 38 (1): 70–91.

30.

Kim

Hun Joon

. 2012. “Structural Determinants of Human Rights Prosecutions After Democratic Transition.” Journal of Peace Research 49 (2): 305–320.

31.

Kim

Hunjoon

Sikkink

Kathryn

. 2010. “Explaining the Deterrence Effect of Human Rights Prosecutions for Transitional Countries.” International Studies Quarterly 54 (4): 939–963.

32.

Littlefield

Ned

Block

Douglas

. 2023. “Identity, Conflict and Discourse: Understanding Military Contestation in Brazil.” Journal of Latin American Studies 55 (3): 491–518.

33.

Masullo

Juan

Morisi

Davide

. 2023. “The Human Costs of the War on Drugs. Attitudes Towards Militarization of Security in Mexico.” Comparative Political Studies 57: 887–920.

34.

Morrison

Kelly

Edwards

Pearce

Askew

Chesani

, 2026. “Replication Data for: Green-lighting Accountability: Transitional Justice and Compliance with Rulings from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.” doi:10.7910/DVN/0PZWUH, Harvard Dataverse, V1, UNF:6:F5CSie8AClcRMGd5fcuEpw== [fileUNF].

35.

Murray

Rachel

. 2020. “Addressing the Implementation Crisis: Securing Reparation and Righting Wrongs.” Journal of Human Rights Practice 12 (1): 1–21.

36.

Nalepa

Monika

. 2010. Skeletons in the Closet: Transitional Justice in Post-Communist Europe. Cambridge University Press.

37.

Nalepa

Monika

. 2022. After Authoritarianism: Transitional Justice and Democratic Stability. Cambridge University Press.

38.

Olsen

Tricia

Payne

Leigh

Reiter

Andrew

, et al. 2010. Transitional Justice in Balance: Comparing Processes, Weighing Efficacy. US Institute of Peace.

39.

Parente

Francesca

. 2022. “Settle or Litigate? Consequences of Institutional Design in the Inter-American System of Human Rights Protection.” The Review of International Organizations 17 (1): 39–61.

40.

Parente

Francesca

. 2023. “Domestic Accountability and Non-Compliance with International Law: Evidence From the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.” Journal of Peace Research 62: 119–133.

41.

Pérez-Liñán

Aníbal

de Valenzuela

Lía

Lugg

Emily

Trejo

Ana Olavarrieta

Smith

Shea

. 2024a. “Inter-American Court of Human Rights Reparations Dataset, Version 20240517.” University of Notre Dame: Reparations Design and Compliance Lab. doi:10.7910/DVN/GQ1CAG.

42.

Pérez-Liñán

Aníbal

Schenoni

Luis

Morrison

Kelly

. 2023. “Compliance in Time: Lessons From the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.” International Studies Review 25: viac067.

43.

Pérez-Liñán

Aníbal

Brocca

Mariana

Inzunza

Isabel Anayanssi Orizaga

. 2024b. “Compliance Agreements: Emergent Flexibility in the Inter-American Human Rights System.” International Studies Quarterly 68: 1–14.

44.

Pion-Berlin

David

. 1994. “To Prosecute or to Pardon: Human Rights Decisions in the Latin American Southern Cone.” Human Rights Quarterly 16: 105.

45.

Pion-Berlin

David

. 2020. “Argentina: The Journey From Military Intervention to Subordination.” In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics. Oxford University Press.

46.

Pion-Berlin

David

Martínez

Rafael

. 2017. Soldiers, Politicians, and Civilians: Reforming Civil-Military Relations in Democratic Latin America. Cambridge University Press.

47.

Przeworski

Adam

. 1988. Democracy as a Contingent Outcome of Conflicts. Studies in Rationality and Social Change, 59–80. Cambridge University Press.

48.

Rebaza

Claudia

. 2023. “Peru Protesters, Including Children, Killed in ‘Extrajudicial Executions’ by Security Forces, Amnesty Finds.” CNN. https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/25/americas/peru-protests-extrajudicial-executions-amnesty-intl-latam/index.html

49.

Roht-Arriaza

Naomi

. 2015. “After Amnesties Are Gone: Latin American National Courts and the New Contours of the Fight Against Impunity.” Human Rights Quarterly 37: 341–382.

50.

Sandoval

Clara

. 2020. “Two Steps Forward, One Step Back: Reflections on the Jurisprudential Turn of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights on Domestic Reparation Programmes.” In The Inter-American Human Rights System, 82–98. Routledge.

51.

Sikkink

Kathryn

Walling

Carrie Booth

. 2007. “The Impact of Human Rights Trials in Latin America.” Journal of Peace Research 44 (4): 427–445.

52.

Skaar

Elin

. 1999. “Truth Commissions, Trials-or Nothing? Policy Options in Democratic Transitions.” Third World Quarterly 20 (6): 1109–1128.

53.

Snyder

Jack

Vinjamuri

Leslie

. 2003. “Trials and Errors: Principle and Pragmatism in Strategies of International Justice.” International Security 28 (3): 5–44.

54.

Svolik

Milan W.

2013. “Contracting on Violence: The Moral Hazard in Authoritarian Repression and Military Intervention in Politics.” Journal of Conflict Resolution 57 (5): 765–794.

55.

Svolik

Milan W.

2015. “Which Democracies Will Last? Coups, Incumbent Takeovers, and the Dynamic of Democratic Consolidation.” British Journal of Political Science 45 (4): 715–738.

56.

Terman

Rochelle

. 2019. “Rewarding Resistance: Theorizing Defiance to International Norms.” Unpublished Manuscript.

57.

White

Peter

. 2021. “Generals in the Cabinet: Military Participation in Government and International Conflict Initiation.” International Studies Quarterly 65 (2): 551–561.

Supplementary Material

Please find the following supplemental material available below.

For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.

For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.

2.87 MB

0.18 MB