of lustration - bureaucratic change and symbolic change - that in combination are theorized to change citizen perceptions of the trustworthiness of public institutions. First, bureaucratic change required by employment vetting removes from positions of power individuals who cannot be trusted to implement new economic policies and political principles. Bureaucratic turnover changes the competency of the public institutions, removing people trained to administer communist, centrally planned economies and replacing them with people committed to implementing market based, rule of law principles. It signals a change in the interests of those institutions to citizen, demonstrating the government’s commitment to the new political and economic principles. By removing the former nomenklatura patronage networks, it also changes the incentive structure of bureaucrats; their rewards are based less on pleasing social networks and more on fulfilling job responsibilities. Citizen trust in the new regime is low when there appears to be little real change in positions or the material benefits from them. If former regime complicity is the primary indicator of economic success in the new system, the new regime will appear unfair and untrustworthy. Second, there is a well documented symbolic or moral component to lustration. Vojtech Cepl, a justice on the Constitutional Court of the Czech Republic and a principal drafter of the Constitution, explained the role of lustration as „ritual purification”, or as a way to change the „moral culture of society.”1 Symbolically, lustration policies signal a break with the past and a change in thought patterns and perspective. The Council of Europe affirmed this interpretation in its 1996 resolution On Measures to Dismantle the Heritage of Former Communist Totalitarian System, highlighting how „old structures and thought patterns have to be dismantled and overcome” through lustration and vetting policies.2 This symbolic break is designed to change the way citizens perceive their government, especially in the case of negotiated settlements or regime changes in which there is substantial continuity of persons in position of power.3 The peaceful CEE „Velvet Revolutions” are largely examples of negotiated settlements, in which forgiving and forgetting former regime wrongs, and allowing individuals to remain in positions of power were constitutive elements of the regional transitions. For example, in the Polish case an intentional „thick line” was drawn between the past and the present, with no clear organizational or bureaucratic changes to demarcate the change.4 As one Deputy Prime Minister of the Czech Republic commented, „the fact that members of the secret police avoided a full vetting after 1989 was I would say a minimal price for the Czechoslovak people to pay for the revolution to be gentle.”5 Even Romania, the only country in CEE to violently overthrow their leadership, did not experience real bureaucratic change. After the execution of Ceauşescu, the RoJustice”, Columbia Journal of Transitional Law, 37, 2 (1999): 358 and 364. 1 Vojtech Cepl, „The Transformation of Hearts and Minds in Eastern Europe”, The Cato Journal, 17, 2 (1997); and Vojtech Cepl and Mark Gillis, „Making Amends After Communism”, Journal of Democracy, 7, 4 (1996): 118-124. 2 Council of Europe, Measures to Dismantle the Heritage of Former Communist Totalitarian Systems. Resolution 1096. Parliamentary Assembly, (Strasbourg, France: The Council of Europe, 1996). http://assembly.coe.int/Documents/AdoptedText/ta96/ERES1096.HTM. 3 Samuel Huntington, The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century (University of Oklahoma Press, 1991), 151-161. 4 Adam Michnik and Václav Havel, „Justice or Revenge”, Journal of Democracy 4, 1 (1993): 23. 5 Lucia Kubosova, „Slovakia: Pandora’s Box Online”, Transitions Online: Policy Briefs, (16-22 November 2004), http://www.ciaonet.org/pbei-2/tol-1/tol_2004/nov16-nov22/nov16-nov22e.html.
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