Lustration Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

Lustration derives from the Latin word meaning “purification.” In political and legal literature, this concept usually refers to the means by which countries deal with past experiences such as war and government regimes. For example, after 1989, in post-Soviet eastern Europe, those who aspire to obtain public positions are screened through specific procedures. This is done to exclude from public office former Communist Party functionaries and secret police collaborators. By the early twenty-first century, most countries in the region, including the Czech Republic, the former East Germany, Hungary, and Poland, had adopted some form of lustration.

At its center, lustration shares the normative and functional characteristics of the transitional justice measures: investigating and reporting on key periods of the recent past; transforming the military, police, judiciary, and related state institutions from corrupt instruments to instruments of public service; and raising moral consciousness about the past. In this context, lustration contributes to the improvement of the democratic consolidation process and to institutional change.

Lustration has been carried out in different ways across central eastern Europe. Its most systematic pursuit took place in the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland. Other countries, such as Albania, Bulgaria, and Romania, have had large public support for lustration, but the political elites did not act as forcefully as the public wanted. In these countries, given the fact that the postcommunist policies have not managed to exclude from the political scene the actors linked with the previous regimes, many lustration legislative projects were discussed, but none of them passed. For instance, during Romania’s first postcommunist decade, the country’s parliamentary political parties did not openly oppose the bill to access the former communist police (Securitate) files, but they proved through their votes that they preferred limited public access to the Securitate files. Therefore, in this case, in spite of public support of lustration, the political elite avoided the issue.

Conceptual Applicability

Among the countries that managed to implement lustration per se, the Czech Republic stands out. After 1991, the Czech Republic took an early interest in lustration and adopted a radical version of it. Accordingly, to avoid charges of revenge seeking, lustration emerged as a mechanism for defending the fragile new Czech democracy. In this case, the purpose was to prevent former communist officials from gaining public positions in the new regime and not to criminalize activities that were legal in the communist era. Consequently, starting in 1991, lustration operated by excluding former communist civil servants and collaborators with the communist secret police from a range of public offices: the upper levels of the civil service, the security services, and top army positions, and from the management of state-owned enterprises, the central bank, and academic institutions. However, due to the loophole in the laws that regulated lustration in the Czech Republic, the screening process did not cover all sectors: candidates for the legislature did not have to be lustrated, and ministers from communist governments were not on any blacklist.

In contrast with the Czech Republic, Poland began relatively late to work on a lustration law. In 1997 the Sejm, or the lower house of the Polish parliament, passed the law and thus created the necessary procedures for screening people seeking public office. In addition, a lustration court was created. Its purpose was to verify whether top officials served or collaborated with the former communist secret police. The court, made up of appellate and provincial court judges, has unlimited access to civil and military archives. Moreover, those found guilty of false statements are banned from public office for ten years and, depending on specific cases, sentenced up to five years in prison for perjury.

In Hungary, after its negotiated transition to democracy, there were immediate demands for lustration. In 1994, two months prior to the national elections, the country’s parliament adopted a law in this regard. However, the Hungarian Constitutional Court removed particular provisions considered to be vague and arbitrary. Consequently, the parliament enacted a new law in 1996 that stated that all persons born before February 14, 1972, must be screened prior to taking an oath before parliament or the president. Moreover, the law stipulated that if an official was found carrying out activities for the former state security service, that official would be asked to resign within thirty days. If the official refused to step down, the findings were to be published in the Hungarian Official Gazette. Additionally, although the legislation was initially to expire in 2000, it continued to be extended until 2004.

Another former communist country, East Germany, made considerable efforts to create and implement a lustration law to give access to the former Secret Security Police (STASI) archives and bring in front of the Judicial Court persons accused of crimes in the communist era. According to German law, employers receive a summary on the individual’s file from the Gauck Authority—the special ministry created to oversee STASI files. In this context, the employer makes an individual decision. However, if not satisfied, the employee can appeal to the labor courts. As a result of the lustration law, at the end of June 1996 the Gauck Authority had answered more than 1.7 million vetting inquiries.

The Lessons Of Lustration

We can glean a number of lessons about lustration. On the one hand, in those countries in which lustration was fairly effective, such as the Czech Republic, it had a relevant impact on economic and political transformation. First, the law of lustration prevented the involvement of the former Nomenklatura members in the privatization process and in the liberalization of the market. Second, the enactment of lustration blocked former communist officials from crucial decision-making positions in the new regime, and the influences of the former political and security networks over the political parties were seriously diminished. As a result, the communists’ loss of influence on the policy agenda allowed a consistent development of democracy; therefore, it can be argued that a positive relationship exists between lustration and the transition to a consolidated democracy.

On the other hand, the absence of a lustration law, combined with the complicity of the new authorities with the structures of the former communist state, has led to a series of political and economic failures. For instance, in some nonlustrated countries, such as Romania, many former communist officials have become highly influential in political life and managed to control the government policy agenda, with negative effects on administrative reform. Moreover, due to various influences of former communists on the privatization process, the economic transition to a free market took more than fifteen years. Consequently, it can be argued that the lack of a lustration law adversely affected the transition to a successful liberal market and consolidated democracy.

Bibliography:

Ash,Timothy. “Trials, Purges, and History Lessons,” 2000, www. decommunization.org/English/Decommunization.htm.
Borza, Ioana. “Decommunization in Romania: A Case Study of the State Security Files Access Law,” 2002, www.polito.ubbcluj.ro/EAST/East6/ borza.htm.
David, Roman. “Lustration Laws in Action:The Motives and Evaluation of Lustration Policy in the Czech Republic and Poland (1989–2001).” Law and Social Inquiry 28, no. 2 (2003): 387–439, www.journals.uchicago.edu/ LSI/journal/issues/v28n2/282001/282001.web.pdf.
Ellis, Mark S. “Purging the Past:The Current State of Lustration Laws in the Former Communist Bloc.” Law and Contemporary Problems 59 (Autumn 1996): 181–196, www law.duke.edu/shell/cite.pl?59+Law+&+Contemp.+Probs.+181+(Fall+1996).
Fowler, Brigid, Alek Szczerbiak, and Kieran Williams. “Explaining Lustration in Eastern Europe: A Post-communist Politic Approach.” Sussex European Institute Working Paper 62. Sussex, U.K.: Sussex European Institute, 2003.
Horne, Cynthia, M. “Late Lustration Programmes in Romania and Poland: Supporting or Undermining Democratic Transitions?” Democratization 16 (April 2009): 344–376.
Nalepa, Monika, and Marek M. Kaminski. “Normative and Strategic Aspects of Transitional Justice.” The Journal of Conflict Resolution 50, no. 3 (2006): 295–302.
Williams, K. “A Scorecard for Czech Republic.” 1999, www.ce-review. org/99/19/williams19.html.

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