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A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Arts And LUSTRATION AND DEMOCRACY: THE POLITICS OF TRANSITIONAL JUSTICE IN THE POST- COMMUNIST WORLD A Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences of Georgetown University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Government By Peter Rožič SJ, MDiv. Washington, DC December 5, 2012 Copyright 2012 by Peter Rožič SJ All Rights Reserved ii LUSTRATION AND DEMOCRACY: THE POLITICS OF TRANSITIONAL JUSTICE IN THE POST- COMMUNIST WORLD Peter Rožič SJ, MDiv. Thesis Advisor: Charles King, PhD. ABSTRACT In transitions from authoritarian regimes, justice has normally encompassed a variety of approaches, from amnesty to public trials. The oddity about the post-communist world is that transitional justice has been reduced to, by and large, the mechanism of lustration, which is the process of limiting the political participation of the former authoritarian elites. This widespread political arrangement raises three puzzles of regime transitions. Why do some post-communist countries lustrate, while others do not? Why do countries with similar authoritarian pasts implement different lustration mechanisms? What explains the timing of lustration? This dissertation argues that three factors–– democracy, elite politics and the institutional environment––explain levels of lustration as measured by an original Lustration Index, covering thirty-four post-communist countries from 1990 to 2012. Statistical analyses, elite interviews and in-depth case studies of Russia and Georgia illustrate that inherited social capital and institutional constraints affect transitional justice in ways that account for lustration as an integral part of post-communist regime change. The findings of this study demonstrate that lustration is a tool by which the transitional elites rewrite the rules of the political process in order to gain and maintain political power. KEYWORDS Lustration, Democracy, Elites, Transitional Justice, Post-Communist Politics, Georgia, Russia iii To my family, companions and friends who taught me the power of humility in reconciliation iv Contents 1 Introducing Lustration ............................................................................................................... 1 1.1 From Continuity to Rupture: Why the Differences? ......................................................... 2 1.2 The Concept of Lustration: Defining the Differences ....................................................... 5 1.3 Overview of the Argument: Explaining the Differences ................................................... 8 2 An Integrative Approach to Continuity and Rupture .............................................................. 14 2.1 An Integrative Theory of Lustration ................................................................................ 14 2.2 Self-Interested Actors ...................................................................................................... 15 2.3 Constraining and Facilitating Structures.......................................................................... 19 2.4 Introducing the Lustration Index ..................................................................................... 23 2.5 Research Design: Case Selection, Data and Model Specification ................................... 27 2.6 Summary .......................................................................................................................... 33 3 The Democratic Model of Lustration ...................................................................................... 35 3.1 Democracy and Lustration ............................................................................................... 35 3.2 Deterministic Effect: Necessary Democracy ................................................................... 36 3.3 Statistical Effect: Significant Democracy ........................................................................ 39 3.4 First Caveat: Causal Direction ......................................................................................... 45 3.5 Second Caveat: Which Democracy ................................................................................. 47 3.6 Cross-National Test of Regime Type Elements .............................................................. 52 3.7 Evidence from the Cases.................................................................................................. 55 3.8 Summary .......................................................................................................................... 63 4 The Elite Model of Lustration Politics .................................................................................... 65 4.1 The Politics and Uses of Lustration ................................................................................. 65 4.2 The Party, Legislature and Lustration.............................................................................. 66 4.3 Statistical Results and Analysis ....................................................................................... 70 4.4 In-Depth Case Analysis ................................................................................................... 76 4.5 Summary .......................................................................................................................... 90 5 Constrained by the Present ...................................................................................................... 92 5.1 Institutional Choice: Systems of Government and Transitional Justice .......................... 92 5.2 Domestic and International Social Conditions .............................................................. 100 5.3 Quantitative Analysis and Case-Based Evidence .......................................................... 108 5.4 Summary ........................................................................................................................ 119 6 Constrained by the Past ......................................................................................................... 120 6.1 Theoretical Framework Connecting Present with Past .................................................. 120 6.2 Pre-Communist Past ...................................................................................................... 122 6.3 Communist Legacies...................................................................................................... 126 6.4 Transition Period............................................................................................................ 130 6.5 Quantitative Test and Evidence from Cases .................................................................. 134 6.6 Summary ........................................................................................................................ 143 v 7 The Big Picture: Conclusions and Implications .................................................................... 145 7.1 Summarizing the Argument of the Study ...................................................................... 146 7.2 The Big-Picture Model: Weaving it Together ............................................................... 148 7.3 Lustration Within and Beyond Post-Communism: Prospects and Implications............ 158 Addenda ...................................................................................................................................... 164 Appendix A: Coding of the Variables and Summary Statistics .................................................. 164 Appendix B: The Concept behind the 1990-2012 Lustration Index ........................................... 176 Introducing the Concept ......................................................................................................... 176 B.1 Challenges to Concept-Building ................................................................................... 176 B.2 Concept’s Basic Level .................................................................................................. 185 B.3 Lustration Program: The Concept’s Secondary Level .................................................. 200 B.4 Implementation Indicators ............................................................................................ 216 Appendix C: The Measure behind the 1990-2012 Lustration Index .......................................... 226 C.1 Concept-Measure Consistency ..................................................................................... 226 C.2 Current Lustration Indices ............................................................................................ 227 C.3 New Measures and Indices: Lustration Programs and Lustration Index ...................... 229 Appendix D: Descriptive and Statistical Proofs to Chapters 2-5 and 7 ...................................... 237 D.1 Chapter 2....................................................................................................................... 237 D.2 Chapter 3....................................................................................................................... 239 D.3 Chapter 4....................................................................................................................... 248 D.4 Chapter 5....................................................................................................................... 249 D.5 Chapter 7....................................................................................................................... 251 Appendix E: Interviews with the Elites
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