The Leninist Legacy and Institutional Change

Hanson, Stephen E.

doi:10.1177/0010414095028002005

Cited by 86 publications

(20 citation statements)

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“…The character and timing of the reform of the main communist party helps determine the strength of the demarcation magnet in the left-tan quadrant, and this in turn influences the openness of the system to EU leverage. This is consistent with research demonstrating that the communist party has remained a key determinant of the political landscape since 1989 (Hanson, 1995;Bozo´ki and Ishiyama, 2002;Grzymala-Busse, 2002). But we argue that the influence of the communist legacy needs to be analyzed in conjunction with the EU accession process.…”

Section: The Evolution Of Party Positions On European Integration Sinsupporting

confidence: 89%

Postcommunist politics in a magnetic field: How transition and EU accession structure party competition on European integration

2009

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How do political parties in Central and Eastern Europe position themselves on European integration? We show that the strongest predictor of a party's stance is ideology. The communist legacy and the European Union (EU) accession process -what we call the demarcation and integration magnets -created a bipolar magnetic field, in which political parties are aligned on a single axis from one pole bundling left-wing economics and cultural traditionalism to another pole combining market liberalism and cultural openness. Over time, the EU accession process compressed this axis by inducing parties to shift away from authoritariannationalist and hard left economic positions. Our analysis reveals how EU leverage has critically influenced the character of political competition in postcommunist states.

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Section: The Evolution Of Party Positions On European Integration Sinsupporting

confidence: 89%

Postcommunist politics in a magnetic field: How transition and EU accession structure party competition on European integration

2009

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“…Proximity to capitalist markets and EU institutions tends to support democracy and transparency (Hanson 1995;Kopstein and Reilly 2000). As EU policies have required lowering corruption, the conditionality exercised through the admission process to the EU may have induced compliance in targeting corruption and state capture (Hollyer 2010).…”

Section: The European Unionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Lustration Matters: a Radical Approach to the Problem of Corruption

Rožič

Nisnevich

2015

St Comp Int Dev

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Do radical anticorruption measures such as lustration reduce corruption by systematically limiting the political participation of former authoritarian actors? While research has largely overlooked the role of transitional justice in addressing corruption, some scholars claim that lustration may increase corruption by reducing bureaucratic expertise. Analyzing original panel data from 30 post-communist states from 1996 to 2011, we find that lustration is effective in lowering corruption. Lustration disrupts the political, economic, and administrative malpractice of the preceding regimes by limiting opportunities for corruption of former communist elites. To illuminate the causal mechanism, we examine the cases of Estonia, which has adopted lustration and lowered corruption; Georgia, which has reduced corruption since first considering lustration; and Russia, which has not adopted lustration and maintains high levels of corruption. This study breaks new ground with a novel system-level explanation and an integrative approach to causation for the entire post-communist world.Corruption in the former communist world represents a major problem for policy makers and scholars alike. Whether in the form of administrative malpractice, asset stripping, or state capture, post-communist corruption has been pervasive and difficult to fight (Karklins 2005). As a theoretically driven problem, studies on corruption have boomed, but anticorruption research remains Ba young métier^(Schmidt 2007). The St Comp Int Dev impact of the anticorruption efforts is ambiguous (Sampson 2010) and the lack of theoretical debate limits research progress.Particularly puzzling is the absence of a major theoretical issue: the impact of transitional justice. If purging corruption is a matter of justice and integrity in societies after a regime change (Anechiarico 1996), why have scholars been silent on whether transitional justice affects post-communist corruption? There have been countryspecific studies regarding the impact of international banks and organizations (Michael 2004), domestic anticorruption agencies, civil society, and the media (Hough 2013) on corruption. However, little research has assessed the mechanisms of transitional justice as anticorruption tools.Lustration is analogous to the transparency and anticorruption legislation that screens politicians for unethical behavior (Alt et al. 2006) and has been viewed as a radical anticorruption measure (Holmes 2006). As a form of social and administrative justice, lustration scrutinizes individuals for links with the previous authoritarian leadership, bureaucracy, or security services and limits their political and civic participation. While it has been often used as a tool for political competition rather than justice (Rožič 2012), we find that lustration coincides with low levels of corruption. Using the discourse of the past to justify lustration against political opponents, political elites reduce corruption when they debate and implement lustration. This correlation raises the unaddr...

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“…Other scholars, however, try to overcome this fatalism and have a more optimistic view for at least sorne postcommunist countries. They either look at pre-communist legacies as being able to eliminate the negative effect of communist era legacies (Brzezinski 2002), or point out at the graduaI process of erosion of communist legacies in post-communist societies (Hanson 1995;. Jowitt (1992) argues that communist era legacies matter most and that they are a burden for democratization; they instead favor authoritarian political trends.…”

Section: Legacy Approachmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Hanson (1995; 'unties the package' of communist legacies, making a difference between ideological, cultural, political and economic legacies. He accepts the argument that they aIl have negative impact on democratization.…”

Section: Legacy As Bu Rdenmentioning

confidence: 99%

Explaining Political Regime Diversity in Post-Communist States: An Evaluation and Critique of Current Theories

Mitropolitski

2007

SSRN Journal

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The Leninist Legacy and Institutional Change

Cited by 86 publications

References 1 publication

Postcommunist politics in a magnetic field: How transition and EU accession structure party competition on European integration

Postcommunist politics in a magnetic field: How transition and EU accession structure party competition on European integration

Lustration Matters: a Radical Approach to the Problem of Corruption

Explaining Political Regime Diversity in Post-Communist States: An Evaluation and Critique of Current Theories

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