Few issues provoke as much controversy during democratization as the fate of officials from the ousted regime. New governments seeking to build democracy face a challenge dealing with existing civil servants who represent antidemocratic crimes. These former regime officials are citizens with valuable administrative skills but may have benefited from corrupt practices, committed violent crimes with impunity, or even orchestrated crimes against humanity. The new government thus decides how deeply to lustrate those representing the past to satisfy victims without inducing rebellion. Existing scholarship views lustration normatively, but I recast it as a crisis bargaining situation to identify the commitment problem inhibiting peaceful resolution. I argue that governments providing credible commitments to limit lustration in extent and iteration reduce opposition from the previous administrative elite and lock in the desired political change. I review evidence from previous lustration cases and show that limiting lustration inhibits rebellion from former regime officials.
