Identifying and Conceptualizing Transnational State Responsibility for Past Historical Injustices

Transnational state responsibility for past historical injustices (TSRPHI) is an emerging field in international human rights. For a systematic and scientific examination of TSRPHI, this paper attempts to create a dataset with the level of TSRPHI. To identify its population, I develop what conceptually constitutes TSRPHI by providing an operational definition and a detailed description of the process applied to obtain historical information within the dataset. In the second part, the level of TSRPHI is conceptualized with the level of transnational reparations in a target country. Ultimately, the level of TSRPHI is operationalized with historical cases of responsibility-taking in which the refusal or issuance of an apology, or payment of financial compensation by a perpetrator state is explicitly directed towards the government or victim groups of another state. In the final section, this article then presents an empirical description of some basic patterns that are to be found in the dataset.