Lustration and the Survival of Parliamentary Parties

Monika Nalepa

《Taiwan Journal of Democracy》 5卷2期 (2009/12) Pp. 45-68

https://doi.org/10.29654/TJD.200912.0003

並列摘要

Lustration laws, which limit the access to public office of persons who previously worked for or collaborated with the ancien régime's secret police, have distributive political effects. Because infiltration varies across political parties, lustration affects parties unequally. Heavily infiltrated parties suffer losses from lustration while mildly infiltrated parties gain. Yet the specific level of infiltration may be unknown to parties that have the potential to gain from lustration, which if sufficiently risk-averse, may prefer to avoid lustration for fear of exposing ”skeletons in their closet.” This is particularly true of parties based upon former dissident groups. This essay hypothesizes that over time, new parties free of infiltration will emerge and compete in democratic elections with the former communist and former dissident parties. Such newcomers stand to gain from lustration that reveals collaborators among the former opposition and former communists. Legislative data from East Central Europe (ECE) is used to illustrate that parties with a prolustration agendum appear later into the transition and that their representation increases over time relative to old parties with antilustration agenda.

並列關鍵字

Lustration ； dissident movements ； democratic transitions ； political parties

參考文獻

Monika Nalepa.Skeletons in the Closet: Transitional Justice in Post-Communist Europe.New York:Cambridge University Press, forthcoming.

Natalia Letki(2002)."Lustration and Democratization in East-Central Europe".Europe-Asia Studies.54(4),529-552.

Cynthia Horne, Margaret Levi, Janos Kornai(ed.), Susan Rose-Ackerman(ed.)(2003).Building a Trustworthy State in Post-Socialist Transition.New York:Palgrave MacMillan.

Roman David(2003)."Lustration Laws in Action: The Motives and Evaluation of Lustration Policy in the Czech Republic and Poland (1989-2001)".Law and Social Inquiry.28(2),387-439.

Hilary Appel(2005)."Anti-Communist Justice and Founding the Post-Communist Order: Lustration and Restitution in Central Europe".East European Politics and Societies.19(3),379-405.