Who Verifies?: Effect of Verification Commissions on Purge Decisions

• In Event: The Political Economy of Authoritarian Rule and Regime Transitions

Abstract

Post-authoritarian democracies facing the challenge of purging their security apparatuses may delegate these decisions to subnational bodies. How do the preferences and capacity of these commissions affect purge decisions? Does high capacity translate into a greater degree of selective (high scrutiny) purges? Does ideological extremity lead to more thorough purges?
We use archival data from the Institute of National Remembrance from the early nineties and voting data from the 1989 Polish assembly to operationalize the capacity and preferences of commissioners. Specifically, for capacity, we rely on the strength of commissioners' networks formed while in confrontation with the communist regime, and for ideology, in the case of politicians serving on the commissions, we use their speeches in the national assembly, voting behavior, and legislative bill sponsorship to estimate their ideological positions.

Authors

• Barbara Maria Piotrowska, King's College London

• Monika Nalepa, University of Chicago