The Political Economy of Transitional Justice: Evaluating the Legacy of Corporate Accountability for Human Rights Violations in Post-Dictatorship Chile

Global Journal of Peace and Conflict Studies | Vol. 10, No. 9, September 2019 | pp. 73–81

DOI: 10.46882/2019/GJPCS/100901

Article Type: Original Research Paper

Title: The Political Economy of Transitional Justice: Evaluating the Legacy of Corporate Accountability for Human Rights Violations in Post-Dictatorship Chile

Authors: Maria Camila Gomez¹, Ziad H. Al-Rifai²

Authors’ Affiliations: ¹Department of Political Science, Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá, Colombia; ²Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Media Studies, American University of Beirut, Beirut, Lebanon

Abstract:
Transitional justice initiatives heavily prioritize cataloging civil and political rights abuses, while routinely overlooking corporate complicity in systemic state repression and economic crimes. This paper evaluates the structural limitations of post-dictatorship Chile’s reconciliation models concerning the prosecution of private entities that actively supported institutionalized violence. Utilizing comprehensive legal archival datasets, corporate registries, and human rights databases from 1990 to 2018, we measure the long-term socioeconomic impacts of omitting corporate accountability from early peace agreements. The quantitative analysis reveals that industrial networks that profited from land confiscations and illegal labor suppression avoided financial and legal restitution, leaving structural economic inequities completely unaddressed. Our statistical models demonstrate that regions with high historical corporate land capture report a 40% increase in localized social protests and labor disputes over resource distribution. The study concludes that traditional transitional justice frameworks fail to foster deep national reconciliation when they ignore economic violations. We argue that modern democratic stability requires integrating binding corporate accountability frameworks directly into transitional justice mechanisms.

Keywords: Political Economy; Transitional Justice; Corporate Complicity; Chile; Structural Inequality; Economic Violations

Manuscript Timeline: Received: February 12, 2019; Revised: April 22, 2019; Accepted: June 10, 2019; Published: September 18, 2019

Citation: Gomez, M. C., & Al-Rifai, Z. H. (2019). The Political Economy of Transitional Justice: Evaluating the Legacy of Corporate Accountability for Human Rights Violations in Post-Dictatorship Chile. Global Journal of Peace and Conflict Studies, 10(9), 73–81. DOI: 10.46882/2019/GJPCS/100901

Subscribe to read the full article: https://internationalscholarsjournals.org/subscribe-to-read