The features of the lustration of the police system: the practice of post-communist countries of Europe (on the example of Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic)

Abstract

The article is dedicated to comparative analysis of causes, peculiarities of the implementation and consequences of the lustration of police system in post-communist countries of Europe, in particular in Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic. It has been revealed that the features of the lustration and liberalization of police system in post-communist Poland, Hungary, Czechia and Slovakia were extremely various and therefore they were able to lead to various organizational and functional consequences and results of police functioning: both at the level of its transformation from an instrument of protection of the autocratic regime into a democracy oriented institution and at the level of processes of its demilitarization, professionalization, specialization, demystification, reduction, decentralization, decriminalization and so on. The author argued that the problem of all the analyzed countries of the region was the fact that the lustration of police system was used (or still continues to do so) to a large extent as manipulative technology by political rivals and media. At the same time, it was discovered that Poland, Hungary, Czechia and Slovakia used various models of lustration law and policy towards secret police and they are largely dependent on different models of transition from authoritarianism to democracy.