The Inter-Americanization of Transitional Justice: The Colombian Case from a Coevolutionary Perspective

There is an ongoing debate on the role of international courts in national politics. Taking as an example the peace process between the Colombian government and the FARC, Hillebrecht, Huneeus and Borda (2018) have identified a process of “judicialization of peace”, underlining the special weight that international courts (in particular, the ICC and the Inter-American Court) had in the peace negotiation. Gargallela (2019), in turn, has objected the latter’s reading of the role of international courts in the Colombian case, proposing the theory of deliberative democracy as a more appropriate approach. This paper aims to contribute to this debate, and propose a coevolutionary analysis of the phenomenon, based on a dialogic, polycentric and incremental view of the interactions of the courts involved in the design of Colombian transitional justice.