6 - STRATEGIC ELITES

Summary

Chapter 5 showed that, empirically, a demand-based explanation for the variation in lustration regimes is not sustainable. Therefore, in this chapter, I turn to the “supply side” of transitional justice policies. This involves analyzing the preferences of relevant political decision makers and the institutional constraints that they faced in adopting lustration policies. Incidentally, this research strategy is similar to the approach taken in the literature on religious markets cited in Chapter 3. R. Finke and L. R. Iannaccone (1993) and others provide empirical evidence that religious awakenings are rarely a manifestation of bottom-up demand for spiritual guidance; instead, these religious awakenings are supply side–driven, as they are created by strategic spiritual leaders. Shifts in the supply side of religious production can be the effect of, for instance, deregulating religious markets. Similarly, lustration laws are not, I argue, a response to popular demand for holding former members of the ancien régime accountable for human rights violations. They are instead supplied by political elites who stood to gain from having lustration laws in place.

Consider once again Table 1.1 and Figure 1.1, showing the timing of lustration in East Central European countries. In the previous four chapters, I focused on explaining the long delay in passing lustration laws. In the chapters to follow, I explain what was responsible for the initially mild but increasingly harsh forms of lustration that came to be adopted.