What factors determine the success of transnational redress?: Political leaders, redress movements, regime type, international human rights regimes or economic relationship

How do people come to terms with past historical injustices between countries? This is a deep-rooted question among previously hostile countries. Focusing on the more practical facet, what factors determine the success of transnational redress of past historical injustice? The existing literature emphasized the importance of the role of political leaders and international human rights laws in a target country, and social movement strategy in an addressee country. Yet, there are many cases that existing theories do not answer appropriately. For example, why does a target country willingly make amends for one case of historical injustice, but not for another case? In addition, existing research lacks systematic analysis, calling into question the applicability of theories. Consequently, this dissertation has two major research goals: proposing new theories and testing the empirical validity of both existing ones as well as new ones. I propose two domestic factors in an addressee country and one dyadic factor between an addressee and target country: (i) adoption of international human right regimes and (ii) democracy in an addressee country, and (iii) economic dependence of an addressee on target country. This dissertation examines transnational redress systematically, using one original data set with two original variables which I have created for 1945 to 2000. I collected 22 transnational redress cases, many of which are obscure in the existing literature. My new data sets include the government acceptance level of nine target countries and the level of reparations claims in twenty addressee countries. The findings of my test are applied to a reparations claims case.