The Impact of Lustration on Democratization in Postcommunist Countries

Horne, Cynthia

doi:10.1093/ijtj/iju011

Cited by 26 publications

(5 citation statements)

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“…76 Lustration has a 'revelatory' element to it which 'functions as a means of providing accountability and acknowledgment' of abuses committed by previous regimes and sometimes also exposes private citizens' complicity in such abuses. 77 However, in the Nigerian experience, lustration was not adopted with victims of abuse in mind. The prospect of using lustration as a revelatory mechanism by both the Abubakar military regime and the civil administration of Obasanjo would not have been contemplated.…”

Section: [B]legal 'Reforms' Trials and Lustrationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Colonialism and the Dilemmas of Transitional Justice in Nigeria

Yusuf

2018

International Journal of Transitional Justice

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Adoption of the colonial template of governance by successive postcolonial governments in Nigeria has limited the ambit of transitional justice, rendering it incapable of addressing the root causes of systematic abuses and conflict in the country. Pathologies of colonial injustice and violence were transmitted into governance in the postcolony and this structural continuity has locked down the prospect of justice and reforms as an integral part of the governance complex. Critical analysis of the Nigerian experience calls attention to the need for transitional justice theory and praxis to engage with the colonial legacy in nonsettler, postcolonial societies. Understanding and engaging with the colonial legacy is critical to the prospects of successful transitional justice in postcolonial polities.

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Section: [B]legal 'Reforms' Trials and Lustrationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Colonialism and the Dilemmas of Transitional Justice in Nigeria

Yusuf

2018

International Journal of Transitional Justice

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“…According to the justice cascade theory, norm creation and diffusion are the result of concerted efforts by norm entrepreneurs, who create transnational advocacy networks to disseminate and promote new norms, which, over time, spread internationally (Risse and Sikkink 1999; Finnemore and Sikkink 1998). The justice cascade—that is, a swell of international interest and citizen participation in human rights, which resulted in new norms and the diffusion of these norms—began in the 1980s, sparked a global increase in the use of transitional justice mechanisms, and accelerated the ongoing expansion of what qualifies as a “human right” (Horne 2014; Parker 2008; Williams, Fowler, and Szczerbiak 2005; Tsutsui and Wotipka 2004; Lutz and Sikkink 2000; 2001; Finnemore and Sikkink 1998).…”

Section: The Rise Of Reparationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reparations, But for What? Presenting a New Approach to Coding Reparations

Greenstein

2023

Law Soc. Inq.

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Reparations payments are commonly measured as either paid versus not paid, or present versus absent. I argue that this approach causes researchers to overlook systematic variation in the types of abuses that governments include in their reparations commitments. This article makes the case for revising quantitative reparations indicators to reflect the fact that governments often promise and/or pay reparations for some human rights violations and not others. Using original data on reparations promises for nine types of state-sanctioned human rights abuses committed during internal conflicts or dictatorships that occurred in twenty-seven countries in Europe between 1939 and 2006, I show that reparations promise rates vary by type of abuse. I also show that they vary over time as human rights norms change, meaning that a static designation of “paid” or “not paid” is incompatible with the dynamism of reparations programs.

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“…20 The impact of lustration on institutional trust-building, good governance, and democratization in Cee has been mixed and conditional. 21 Single case studies have often found less positive or even negative effects, often linking the contentious politics surrounding lustration to suboptimal outcomes. 22 Comparative case studies have shown more positive, albeit conditional, relationships between lustration, governance, and trust.…”

Section: Time and Transitional Justicementioning

confidence: 99%

Contending Temporalities: Stretching the Temporal Reach of Lustration in Central and Eastern Europe

Horne

2023

East European Politics and Societies: and Cultures

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As part of decommunization, states in Central and Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union used lustration measures to remove communist officials and secret police collaborators from positions of power and to bring to light communist era abuses. As a form of transitional justice, lustration is unusually temporally tethered to the communist past. However, in practice some states stretched lustration’s temporal parameters, reaching back up to eighty years to pre-Soviet and Nazi World War II (WWII) abuses, and extending forward decades into the post-communist present. This temporal stretching expanded lustration’s goals beyond vetting mechanism, to corruption fighter, historical memory marker, and nation-state (re)builder. Lustration’s temporal stretching conflicts with Venice Commission, Council of Europe, and European Court of Human Rights’ guidelines and legal rulings on lustration. This article presents three temporal approaches to the window of time covered by lustration in eleven post-communist states between 1990 and 2018: lustration focused on a single, elongated communist past, lustration covering multiple pasts, and lustration spanning both communist and post-communist abuses. Comparative cases in these three temporal categories illustrate significant variation within states surrounding the temporal purview of lustration. This regional variation is juxtaposed with Council of Europe guidelines, related court rulings, and Venice Commission amicus briefs to illustrate contending temporalities surrounding the use of lustration as an “extraordinary” justice measure in consolidated democracies. This study highlights the importance of time as a variable and invites more empirical work on the conditional effects of time on transitional justice.

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The Impact of Lustration on Democratization in Postcommunist Countries

Cited by 26 publications

References 0 publications

Colonialism and the Dilemmas of Transitional Justice in Nigeria

Colonialism and the Dilemmas of Transitional Justice in Nigeria

Reparations, But for What? Presenting a New Approach to Coding Reparations

Contending Temporalities: Stretching the Temporal Reach of Lustration in Central and Eastern Europe

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