Learning from the South

Abstract

Over the last three decades, governments in Latin America and Southeast Asia have transitioned from authoritarian to democratic regimes. A series of reforms to criminal procedures have been promoted to improve transparency and accountability and reduce the chronic backlog suffered by courts in the region. These reforms are based on the “ideal” model of societies in the Global North. However, due to the socioeconomic conditions and the institutional history of societies in these regions, these reforms have not achieved the proposed goals. Because of these failures, later reforms in Latin America have prioritised managerial concerns. Thus, they have favoured different types of bargained justice and simplified procedures that usher in convictions based mainly on police reports without a proper cross-examination of evidence. This article argues that jurisdictions in both regions could learn a lot from one another regarding avoiding failures and unintended consequences. To achieve this, the article uses a comparative approach and demonstrates the potential of this by comparing four reform strategies carried out in Argentina and the Philippines.