This book provides a systematic and comparative study of the way three countries in the Southern Cone of the Americas have confronted the legacy of past human rights violations. It examines their attempts to rebuild human rights through public accountability, compensation, educational policy, constitutional reform, and debates about national history and collective memory.

The form of social relations described by the terms 'patronage' and 'patron-client relations' is of central concern to sociologists, anthropologists and political scientists today. Characterised by its voluntary and highly personal but often fully institutionalised nature, it is a type of behaviour found in almost every human society. It touches upon basic aspects of the construction and regulation of social order and is therefore closely connected to major theoretical problems and controversies in the social sciences.

This book analyses some special types of these interpersonal relations...