Keeping the Wolves at Bay: Transitional Justice and Reform in Argentina, South Africa and Hungary

In Keeping the Wolves at Bay: Transitional Justice and Reform in Argentina, South Africa and Hungary I analyze transitional justice practices in post-military dictatorship Argentina, post-Apartheid South Africa and post-Communist Hungary. In the research process I set out to answer the question "What is the relationship between transitional justice and regime consolidation?" in these three societies. I focus on how transitional justice practices manifested in three arenas: the legal order of the state, the economic order of the state, and the state's bureaucratic apparatus.;I argue that transitional justice provides a direct path for engaging with authoritarian reserve domains within the new regime. My research also shows that the elites' engagement with the threat infrastructure of transition is dynamic. A threat infrastructure comprises numerous threats and, consequently, elites engage in prioritization of perceived consolidation threats. This prioritization has immediate consequences for the development of transitional justice policy.;The attempt to understand the details of this dynamic process of shaping transitional justice policy as a result of emerging consolidational threats, their different prioritization and the response to the policies that were put in place to respond to them is central to the analysis of transitional justice policies that affect the legal order of the state, the economic order of the state, and the state's bureaucratic apparatus.;The story this dissertation tells is not one of transitional justice policy as a governmental elite phenomenon. The story it tells is that of transitional justice as a process that, through governmental elite initiative, opens a space for alternatives coming from different parts of society and government to manifest themselves and shape deeply the political process of transition at its core: rule refinement and creation, resource allocation and policy implementation. These alternatives can be democratic or authoritarian in nature and the ultimate outcome is dependent on how far the groups that propose them are willing to activate themselves in the negotiation of transitional justice policy within a society.