Replication Data for: Victim’s Justice in the Aftermath of Political Violence: Why Do Countries Award Reparations?

Governments often award reparations to victims of mass human rights violations (HRVs) committed during political violence. Although international law requires that governments compensate and restore victims of such violations, some states award reparations while others do not. In this paper, we provide the first global analysis of the determinants of state reparations awards to victims - the only transitional justice mechanism that focuses on restoring, repairing and rehabilitating victims following HRVs. To examine reparations awards, we consider the impact of factors such as whether a country has used other types of transitional justice mechanisms, economic development, and regime type. Using spatial analysis and rare events logit on a new database for all countries with political violence between 1969 and 2006, we find that 1) the use of other transitional justice mechanisms increases the likelihood of reparations awards, 2) truth commissions have the largest effect on the likelihood of reparations, 3) wealthy as well as democratic countries are more likely to award reparations than are poorer as well as non-democratic countries, and 4) reparations programs often follow democratic transitions, but rarely occur during them. These findings shed light on the determinants of reparations for mass HRVs.