Lustration and the Survival of Parliamentary Parties

Abstract

Lustration laws, which limit the access to public office of persons who previously worked for or collaborated with the ancien regime's secret police, have distributive political effects. Because infiltration varies across political parties, lustration affects parties unequally. Heavily infiltrated parties suffer losses from lustration while mildly infiltrated parties gain. Yet the specific level of infiltration may be unknown to parties that have the potential to gain from lustration, which if sufficiently risk-averse, may prefer to avoid lustration for fear of exposing ”skeletons in their closet.” This is particularly true of parties based upon former dissident groups. This essay hypothesizes that over time, new parties free of infiltration will emerge and compete in democratic elections with the former communist and former dissident parties. Such newcomers stand to gain from lustration that reveals collaborators among the former opposition and former communists. Legislative data from East Central Europe (ECE) is used to illustrate that parties with a prolustration agendum appear later into the transition and that their representation increases over time relative to old parties with antilustration agenda.