Political cycles and transitional justice: Evidence from Uruguay and Chile

This study concentrates on how countries deal with the mass human rights violations, large-scale massacres, and social abuses experienced during authoritarian rule. A comparative research is conducted, focusing on the differences and similarities between societies governed by bureaucratic authoritarian systems. Uruguay and Chile are studied as similar cases that have ended up with different outcomes in transitional justice processes. The main question of the study is whether and how political cycles affect transitional justice policies. It is assumed that successive leftist governments in power can better serve transitional justice. However, despite the successive electoral victories of the left in Uruguay and its relatively longer control over the executive, it is concluded that the country could not perform better than Chile, where left and right-wing actors alternated in the executive.