History, Ethics, Politics: Rethinking the Legacy of Truth Commissions

In regime transitions, a number of mechanisms are utilized to memorialize the past and to reject the ideas associated with human rights abused of the prior regime. This is often done through truth commissions, apologies, memorials, museums, changes in place names, national holidays, and other symbolic measures. In the United States, some efforts along these lines have been undertaken, but on the whole they have been very limited and inadequate. In addition, many symbols and memorials associated with the past, such as Confederate monuments and the Confederate Battle Flag, continue to be displayed. Hence while some progress has been made on these issues, much more needs to be done.

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Building Trust in Public Institutions

10.1093/oso/9780198793328.003.0004 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Cynthia M. Horne

Keyword(s):

Political Parties ◽

Political Trust ◽

Public Institutions ◽

Truth Commissions ◽

Trust Building ◽

Public Disclosure ◽

Building Trust ◽

Building Effects

This chapter examines the conditions under which lustration and truth commissions affected trust in targeted public institutions, such as the judiciary, the parliament, the police, and political parties, or composites of institutions, such as oversight institutions or elected institutions. I find strong and consistent relationships between lustration and political trust, except for the most highly politicized public institutions. More extensive and compulsory programs were associated with the largest trust-building effects. Truth commissions were not associated with political trust-building. This chapter also demonstrates that delayed reforms were more effective than reforms initiated right after the transition for most of the institutions, except for highly politicized institutions. This runs contrary to assumptions about the necessity of starting reforms immediately after the transition or not at all. The chapter presents the paired cases of Bulgaria and Romania and illustrates the possibilities for public disclosure programs to effect lustration-like reforms.

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Classifying Countries within the Transitional Justice Typology

10.1093/oso/9780198793328.003.0003 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Cynthia M. Horne

Keyword(s):

Transitional Justice ◽

Truth Commissions ◽

Public Disclosure ◽

Employment Change ◽

The Czech Republic ◽

File Access ◽

Independent Variable ◽

Public Disclosures

Chapter 2 explores each of the country cases in this project, namely the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Russia, Ukraine, and Albania. The chapter provides historical details of the transitional justice reforms in all twelve countries from 1989–2013, covering lustration, file access, public disclosures, and truth commissions. This material is then used to place each country case within the typology developed in Chapter 1, according to whether the measures were expansive and included compulsory employment change, limited and included largely voluntary employment change, informal and largely symbolic, or actively rejected. The chapter provides variable conceptualization and operationalization specifics to be used in the subsequent statistical analyses, including three different lustration variables, a truth commission variable, and timing of reform variables. It provides qualitative, comparative historical details to justify the classification of countries according to the primary independent variable, namely lustration and public disclosure programs.

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