ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I give a brief overview of each of the 26 transitional cases that potentially fall within the scope of my inquiry. Because of space limitations, this book discusses only five countries in detail-El Salvador, Argentina, Honduras, South Africa and Sri Lanka-but it is worthwhile to understand the wide range of actual state experience. In a section detailing the experiences of each country, I describe the history of repression, the balance of forces (civil/ military or government/opposition), external influences that may have affected the course of the transition, and the transition type itself (replacement/effective overthrow,1 transplacement or transformation). Finally, I describe the variety of actions taken in that state to address the ‘legacy of the past’. As already discussed in the introduction, which introduces the dilemma, the way I have drawn the parameters of this inquiry excludes certain sorts of cases. I do not investigate cases where a victory of rebels over the government, or external intervention, has so completely quashed likely sources of opposition that my dilemma does not arise. These would include so-called victors’ justice cases like the Nuremberg prosecutions as well as instances in Ethiopia where the previous regime was overthrown and then prosecuted. Similarly, if a serious demand for accountability has not been articulated, the dilemma does not arise. A more complex situation is that found in many of the post-communist regimes, where what took place was not an overthrow, but generally transformation or transplacement, but justice was frequently not pursued for legalistic, rather than political reasons. I have nonetheless included the last category of cases here.
