Similar Measures and Divergent Outcomes: Assessing the Effects of Lustration in CEE

This paper will examine the divergent effects of lustration and public disclosure measures in CEE on political trust building, social trust building, democracy and corruption. Looking at the experiences across 12 post-communist countries in the region, this paper shows that lustration measures can support some, undermine other, and have no effects on still other transition goals. The effects of lustration on state building and societal reconciliation in the post-communist context has been multidimensional and its divergent and even contradictory effects bear closer exploration.