8
Beyond the National: Pathways of Diffusion*
Helga A. Welsh
Ideally, in the aftermath of dictatorial rule, victims’ concerns are addressed
and their oppressors punished, the truth about the structures and incidence
of human rights violations is unearthed, and bridges are built between
opposing camps to secure a democratic future. However, we have no
expedient prescriptions for the best combination of preferred measures or
the best way to implement them or the best way to translate them across
locales. For some, coming to terms with the past is necessarily conditioned
by a speciﬁc history, politics, and society. What ﬁts one country may not ﬁt
another.1
In practice, the spread of transitional justice norms and processes exerts
external inﬂuence on policies.2
Brigitte Weiffen speaks of a “global phase” and
divides international impact into two main categories: transnational networks,
in particular non-governmental organizations (“bottom-up variant”) and
direct intervention (“top-down variant”).3
More speciﬁc international and
transnational actors also agitate for accountability measures.4
Ellen Lutz
and Kathryn Sikkink coined the term “justice cascade” to describe the process
by which one transnational advocacy network – activist lawyers – contributed
to the proliferation of human rights trials in Latin America.5
Independent of
the particular form of inﬂuence, international transitional justice advocacy
has increased and become more professionalized.6
When the countries in Central and Eastern Europe, deﬁned here as those
nominally sovereign during communist rule and now members of the
European Union (EU) and NATO,7
exited communism in 1989–1990, dealing
with the abuses of the previous regime was an urgent and immediate
task. Discourses were heated, policies contested, and the timing, methods,
and scope of responses differed considerably, exposing a continuum of
action from leaders to laggards. Surprisingly, then, in comparison to other
167
parts of the world, external inﬂuence on transitional justice policies here has
received scant attention. Once the EU became a major actor, John Gledhill
highlighted the largely unintended consequences of regional integration on
“historical reckoning” but concluded that the inﬂuence was “partial and
variable.”8
A second strand of literature analyzed how international courts
set standards for transitional justice policies.9
Twenty-ﬁve years after the newly established democratic governments ﬁrst
openly confronted the human rights legacies of communist regimes, I revisit
the question,10
asking to what extent the salience and form of international
organizations and transnational interactions have evolved and to what effect.
This approach is warranted by the view of Europe as an ideal laboratory for
diffusion studies due to the Europeanization of policies and Central and
Eastern Europe as an ideal demonstration of the signiﬁcance of transnational
actors during the transition years.11
I also want to examine the imputation that
geographic diffusion effects reinforce regional patterns – what would drive
such convergence?12
I use the term diffusion to encompass indirect, exogenous effects on
framing debates, setting standards, and institutionalizing transnational networks.
In its most basic form, it refers to the local effects of policies and
practices that originated in other countries or with international organizations.
It privileges processes over outcomes, which can vary greatly; scholars
emphasize the conditions that favor it, the mechanism used, the actors
that promote it, and its function.13
Diffusion mechanisms can be used to
advance certain policies, mobilize support, gain legitimacy, and validate
often divergent policy approaches. I differentiate between some form of
learning as part of cross-national demonstration effects, norm promotion,
passive leverage, and spillover. These categories serve as an analytical
road map; they may be distinct in theory, but in practice, their borders are
ﬂuid.
I begin with a synopsis of transitional justice in Central and Eastern
Europe, highlighting convergence amid differentiation. The main section
describes relevant diffusion mechanisms, their effects on receiving countries,
and the agents involved (see Figure 8.1). I pay special attention to the
variety of expressions of Europeanization processes.14
The discussion traces
the evolution of transmission channels from mostly bilateral contacts to
interactions with international organizations and the establishment of structured
networking. The conclusion summarizes how diffusion played out in
Central and Eastern Europe, the barriers it encountered, and suggestions for
future research.
168 Helga A. Welsh
transitional justice in central and eastern
europe: an overview
Choosing a starting point for any study of regional diffusion processes at once
raises important methodological questions: How to establish a certain degree
of commonality among a set of countries without downplaying or misrepresenting
their policy diversity? Can commonality be explained by pathdependent
domestic processes or international trajectories? When both are
involved, what is their individual weight? The few extant cross-national,
longitudinal studies illustrate the problems of delineating causality. Tricia
D. Olsen, Leigh A. Payne, and Andrew G. Reiter, covering the period from
1970 to 2007, suggest regional patterns: “Trials, lustration policies, and reparations
occur most often in Europe. Non-European countries more frequently
adopt truth commissions and amnesties than do their European counterparts,
with a particularly high number of amnesties granted in Latin America.”15
Another study by the same authors, examining court trials from 1970 to 2004,
challenges the assumption of regional contagion effects per se; advocacy
networks and membership in international organizations and/or international
nongovernmental organizations are crucial.16
Although transitional justice, under different names, has a long tradition,17
the post-communist challenges were unique with few precedents to draw
from. Rights abuses were convoluted; in targeting large groups, they took the
form of expropriation and surveillance, and subjected alleged and real political
dissenters to a wide range of measures, including imprisonment. The most
brutal forms of terror and repression were exercised in the late 1940s and the
1950s. The “softer” forms that gradually replaced them still relied on intimidation
and harassment and tolerated no opposition.
Agents (Actors in Sending
and Receiving Countries)
Effects on
Receiving CountriesDiffusion Pathways
Governmental and
semipublic institutions
International organizations
Non-governmental
organizations
Transnational advocacy
groups
Epistemic communities
Demonstration effect
Norm promotion
Passive leverage
Spillover
Inspiration
Emulation
Norm promotion
Networking
Coalition building
ﬁgure 8.1: Agents, Diffusion Pathways, and Effects
Beyond the National: Pathways of Diffusion 169
In reaction, a distinct, shared preoccupation with the legacy of state
security agents and access to their ﬁles became the prime mode of revelation.
In contrast to lustration procedures, court trials of deposed communist
ofﬁcials were mostly symbolic; they were old and ill, and their sentences
were lenient. Restorative measures were widely seen as the material and
immaterial redress that victims were owed, but although restitution of conﬁscated
private property was deemed central to economic justice, it was
politically charged. Excluding Romania, where property restitution remains
unresolved,18
the other countries acted relatively swiftly but policies differed
in who was entitled, what time frame was applied, and what form restitution
(in-kind restitution versus material compensation) would take. Each of these
decisions raised questions about exclusion and potential discrimination.
While state-sponsored truth commissions to achieve historical reckoning
have spread around the world, regionally, their role and impact have been
muted and restricted to Germany and Romania.19
Memorialization strategies
abounded everywhere, ranging from renaming a street to the construction
of museums.
Some path development was expected, and similarities in approach, but
not scope and timing, can be explained by common contexts – the countries’
geographic and systemic proximity and the roughly forty-year span of
communist rule. Nonetheless, scholars have been preoccupied with the
degree of variation in these countries’ transitional justice policies. (East)
Germany and the Czech Republic were forerunners with prompt, extensive
policies. After slow starts, Poland and Slovakia became more engaged but
not Bulgaria and Romania. Hungary has occupied a special position, as its
policy repertoire mirrored those of other countries, but was particularly
constrained by constitutional jurisdiction.20
Broadly speaking, explanations for these variations focus on legacy and
present politics, but the proper mix remains disputed.21
Recurring variables
are: (1) the different degrees of legitimacy of the communist regimes; (2) distinctive
paths away from communism toward democracy that produced
variations in accommodation with and inﬂuence of the previous communist
elites; and (3) strategic elite calculations.22
Transitional justice is generally
portrayed as a struggle among political elites, neglecting not only civil
society groups and the media but also external factors that played important
roles in the discourse and kept it alive, particularly where legislation and/or
implementation were delayed or weak.23
The following sections explore divergent diffusion channels and outcomes
across the region.
170 Helga A. Welsh
demonstration effects and cross-national
communication
Czechoslovakia and Germany were the ﬁrst to enact lustration, the aspect of
transitional justice most distinct to Central and Eastern Europe and the
most disputed.24
Germany pioneered public access to state security ﬁles, and
both countries have been vigilant in enacting transitional justice policies.
Consequently, their acts have been frequent reference points in the neighboring
countries’ discourse, although best practices were also drawn from other
sources. For example, in the lustration debates at the beginning of the 1990s,
Spain’s and Portugal’s “drawing a thick line” and advocating “forgive and
forget” countered the Czech and German emphasis on disclosure and potential
employment bans.25
Lustration laws required screening public ofﬁcials, a task most often
handled by special committees. In all settings, it was soon intimately linked
with public access to the ﬁles of the former secret police. Proponents advocated
ﬁle access as an important step in the decommunization process and the
main vehicle of “truth ﬁnding.”26
Naming secret service agents and collaborators
was also perceived as an important corollary to the few criminal trials.
Arguments against reliance on the ﬁles and public access to them have run the
gamut: the ﬁles are incomplete and inaccurate; opening them will expose and
undermine secret police methods, spark revenge and hatred, and violate laws
to protect personal information and other laws.27
Despite these concerns, in summer 1990, the freely elected parliament of
the German Democratic Republic (GDR) voted unanimously to open the
ﬁles of the hated state security, commonly called the Stasi, and in August it
passed by a wide majority a law securing Stasi ﬁles as one of its last acts.
Following uniﬁcation with West Germany in 1990, the Stasi Records Act
passed in December 1991,28
and public access started in 1992. A separate
agency, the Federal Commissioner for the Records of the State Security
Service of the former German Democratic Republic (BStU), was created to
house the ﬁles, to organize the modalities of public access, and to conduct
research on them. This institutional innovation proved too important to
ignore, and by 2002, all countries in the region had opened special state
security archives and made ﬁles accessible to the public.
Important country-speciﬁc differences remain. They include the number of
ﬁles made public or destroyed in the aftermath of the communist collapse and
privacy stipulations. The archives themselves differ in terms of organizational
structure, staff, and public availability. Some include documents from World
Beyond the National: Pathways of Diffusion 171
War II. Several institutions copied the BStU in building substantial research
departments, while others are solely archives. Public response to ﬁle access has
also differed; applications remain highest in Germany. Explanations for this
variation include the availability of ﬁles, bureaucratic obstacles to access, and
the passage of time, which may have dampened interest.
Disparities notwithstanding, the spread of ﬁle access begs for an explanation.
Domestic factors, such as shifting political coalitions and policy goals,
may have pushed neglected demands for ﬁle access to the top of the agenda.
Council of Europe Resolution 1096 (1996) recommended opening secret
service ﬁles, but its impact was marginal at best. More likely is the power of
the demonstration effects from neighboring countries. As in other areas of
transitional justice, observers cited German ﬁle access as either a model
or unsuitable for other countries in the region. Although skepticism about
the practice, seen as “typically German,” prevailed initially, the debate con-
tinued.29
When the perceived negative side effects did not materialize, the
German model became attractive: it helped to prevent the illegal release of
ﬁles and subsequent media leaks that rocked politics everywhere.30
As Georges
Mink contends, “the model that won all countries’ admiration was the one
designed by the Germans of the former GDR,” referring to the BStU, whose
sheer existence spurred emulation, however delayed and controversial.31
In Poland, public ﬁle access was rejected at ﬁrst because creating an archive
would have delayed lustration, but the BStU example turned opinion. The
Polish Institute of National Remembrance (IPN), founded in 1998, is hardly
imaginable without the BStU.32
IPN member Antoni Dudek explains: “The
example of the BStU was very important for authors of the act on the IPN, but
the IPN is not a copy.” Among other novel features, it has a prosecution
department, and the Polish lustration model is quite different from
Germany’s.33
In the Czech Republic, the idea of public ﬁle access was discussed from the
beginning of lustration: “the fact that it was possible to do it in Germany was
one of the arguments for the opening of the archives.”34
Slovak reporters used
legislation in neighboring countries to support similar measures: “it was therefore
‘high time’ for the country to do the same.”35
In similar fashion, Archivist
La´szlo´ Varga refers to the important role that the BStU played in debates about
founding the Historical Archive in Hungary.36
Paweł Machcewicz speaks of a
“chain reaction with the most important countries, Germany and Poland,
showing the way.”37
In countries where public ﬁle access ran into strong resistance, the German
approach was particularly attractive. The ﬁrst head of the BStU, Joachim
Gauck, writes that in Bulgaria and Romania, “the few who advocated dealing
172 Helga A. Welsh
with the past praised our solution almost effusively,” while others clearly
disassociated themselves from it.38
He visited Romania in 1992, 1994, and
1997. In 1992, he was invited by the Association of Former Political Prisoners
(AFDPR), an important civil society actor with over 100,000 members; according
to Petrescu and Petrescu, “[i]t was the ﬁrst time . . . the problem of dealing
with the ﬁles of the secret police was discussed in a professional manner.”39
As
part of his 1997 visit, Gauck reported to the Romanian parliament. As early as
1993, Constantin Ticu Dumitrescu, Senator for the National Peasant Party
and a founder of the AFDPR, proposed a bill that would allow citizens access
to Securitate ﬁles, but he was criticized even by his own party. Gauck allegedly
encouraged him: “Don’t think in Germany it was easier.”40
Defeated several
times, the 1999 “Ticu law” allowed limited access to the Securitate ﬁles; it was
revised in 2006, but the Romanian Constitutional Court declared it unconstitutional
by unanimous vote in 2008. To this day, ﬁle access is disputed.41
Initially, the post-communist countries were preoccupied with how they
would tackle their past; information about neighboring practices was communicated
mostly through the media. Often these accounts lacked detail about
limitations and weaknesses of particular approaches but they were still expedient
as they invited comparison with the situation at home. The practice of
ﬁle access spread by example and soft means – information visits, conferences,
and workshops. The BStU mattered, but emulation was reinforced by crosscultural
communication that raised awareness and inspired others.
Inquiries from abroad arrived at the BStU; its employees were invited to
visit, and Gauck traveled widely, often supported by funds from German
political foundations and government ministries. How the agency should
respond to these requests was a matter of debate. Promoting the German
example was rejected, but disseminating ideas and information about the
agency’s work, which was intended to dispel objections to creating similar
agencies in other settings and to support domestic stakeholders in the
German model, was deemed acceptable. BStU researchers could accept
invitations to engage in such activities, while they could not travel on ofﬁcial
business.42
At times, German political foundations acted as brokers between sending
and receiving countries. All major German political parties have such foundations
that provide “assistance for democratization and political cooperation”
at home and abroad; after the fall of communism, they quickly established
themselves in Central and Eastern Europe.43
These foundations pursued
political education on transitional justice by establishing contacts among
politicians, civil society groups, and media representatives in the host countries,
on the one hand, and the BStU and other German transitional justice
Beyond the National: Pathways of Diffusion 173
agencies, on the other. They mediated the diffusion of ideas by arranging study
trips and political consultations, and acted as “norm entrepreneurs” or “agents
of projection” when they organized national and international seminars and
conferences.44
For example, just before the parliamentary debates in 1999,
Romanian members of parliament, journalists, and historians visited the
BStU, and the media reported on its activities, highlighting the substantial
differences between the German and Romanian experiences in dealing with
the communist state security services.45
Ekaterina Boncheva, board member
of the Committee for Access and Disclosure of Documents and Announcing
Afﬁliation of Bulgarian Citizens to the State Security and the Intelligence
Services of the Bulgarian National Armed Services, used her journalistic
credentials to interview Gauck when he visited Bulgaria and, in 1999, wrote
about the work of the BStU after a visit to Berlin funded by the Konrad
Adenauer Foundation.46
Journalists played important roles in informing the public of practices in
other countries, and became active in their own right. Inspired by Bulgarian
efforts, in 2006, Romanian journalists launched a Clean Voices campaign to
identify secret agents among television reporters, press contributors, and talk
show hosts.47
Before the law enabling access to communist secret documents
was adopted in December 2006, non-governmental organizations and journalists
organized an international conference with representatives from Poland,
the Czech Republic, Germany, Slovakia, and Romania and collected the laws
of these countries to inﬂuence Bulgarian legislation based on “European best
practices.”48
Evocation of European standards was a powerful device used in
all countries.
norm promotion and passive leverage: the role
of european institutions
The “return to Europe” and entry into the international community of
democratic states ﬁgured prominently in the policy objectives of all Central
and East European countries. Due to the special circumstance of German
uniﬁcation, the former East Germany joined European institutions in 1990.
For the others, membership in the Council of Europe was expedited in the
ﬁrst half of the 1990s; accession to the EU followed in 2004 and 2007.
For the EU, transitional justice is an evolving activity that focuses on
international criminal justice and support for victims; in other domains, its
support is more muted and limited to funding. Most initiatives to promote
criminal prosecutions, truth commissions, victim reparation programs, and
security system reform, including, but not limited to, vetting the police, army,
174 Helga A. Welsh
and judiciary,49
have come too late to affect Central and East European
countries in concrete ways. Nevertheless, the prospect of joining European
institutions inﬂuenced discourse and practices.
Norm Promotion. The Copenhagen criteria, passed in 1993, demanded
democracy and rule of law, among other things, as preconditions for
EU accession, but their link to reckoning with the past was vague at best and
never a benchmark in negotiations. However, the pursuit of democracy and
rule of law was not without utility in enabling policy entrepreneurs to assert
soft inﬂuence, albeit to different ends. Noel Calhoun argues, for example, that
in Poland, lustration was initially restrained by a political debate about its
compatibility with liberal democratic principles. With time, the “debates grew
more nuanced,” as policy entrepreneurs learned from their own experiences,
those of neighboring countries, and parameters set by international
organizations.50
The rule-of-law criteria are indispensable but open-ended when applied to
the pursuit of transitional justice. They focus on Europeanization channels
through the legal community, in particular the Council of Europe and its
Court, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). Although the newly
established courts in post-communist Central and Eastern Europe became
important in framing transitional justice policies, they became embroiled
in legal disputes over the constitutionality of criminal trials, lustration, and
restitution rulings. Domestic courts entered largely uncharted waters to ﬁnd
answers to such vexing problems as retrospective justice, statutes of limitations,
fairness, and the right to privacy versus the public good. In lustration
cases, for example, Maran Safjan, former Polish Constitutional Tribunal
judge and now member of the EU Court of Justice, summarized the dilemma:
“two opposite sides can present serious arguments based directly on constitutional
values and principles.”51
Divergent approaches have been explained by procedural versus substantive
applications of the law. The history of the communist regime in question and
its legal and political reasoning heavily inﬂuenced transition modes. The
jurisdiction of the Hungarian and Czech constitutional courts stood at opposite
ends, while the Polish constitution took a compromise approach.52
As in
other areas of transitional justice, the rationales for avenues taken stem from
national conditions.
However, domestic courts did not act in isolation: they borrowed laws,
applied comparative frameworks, and received advice from international
courts. European institutions and national non-governmental organizations
from Europe and the United States trained public ofﬁcials, including legal
personnel, aiming for both knowledge transfer and socialization. References to
Beyond the National: Pathways of Diffusion 175
the practices of neighboring countries were common,53
but access to international
legal bodies, such as the ECHR and the International Labour
Organization (ILO), subjected affairs once considered solely in the domestic
domain to advisement, if not scrutiny. “An intervention from Strasbourg,”
where the ECHR is located, “was seen as an important and highly appreciated
guarantee of the correct path and irreversibility of the democratic transition,
which included a ‘human rights approach’ to transition.”54
Together with the
Venice Commission, an advisory body of the Council of Europe and the
ECHR, standards were set by scrutinizing and ﬁne-tuning national legislation.
In her account of the ECHR case law, Eva Brems attests to the court’s restraint
in dealing with transitional justice yet demonstrates its importance in setting
criteria for resolving disputes and addressing individual complaints.55
In a
similar vein, Hamilton and Buyse laud the “nuanced approach” of the court,
whose adjudications stressed the timing of certain policies, individual assessment
of collective guilt, and the context and implementation of transitional
justice measures.56
The court has been most active in property restitution, and Central and
Eastern European claimants have used this avenue repeatedly; it reviewed far
fewer questions about lustration. Overall, the court was limited by temporal
jurisdiction – adjudication can only happen in matters that occur after a
country has ratiﬁed its membership in the court. The effects of these debates
on the adjudication of transitional justice are open to discussion. Wojciech
Sadurski, a legal scholar, attributed the “by-and-large lukewarm attitudes of
many constitutional courts” partly to “external inﬂuences that, on balance,
inclined the legal systems . . . against rather than in favour of lustration.”57
For
Jirˇı´ Prˇiba´n, referring to rule of law became a “power technique.”58
Others
emphasize how lustration debates helped to deﬁne citizens’ rights, state duties,
and judicial restraint.59
So far, the notion of Europeanization has been
distinguished from the EU framework whose impact on transitional justice
through passive leverage was ﬂeeting.
Passive leverage: Milada Vaduchova introduced the term passive leverage to
highlight the indirect inﬂuence that prospective membership can have on EU
applicant countries, as opposed to active leverage, which sets out concrete
goals that have to be met. It shows the “traction that the EU has on the
domestic politics of credible candidate states by virtue of its existence and its
usual conduct.”60
In the absence of active leverage, both advocates and
opponents jiggled the possibility of EU membership to legitimize their own
agendas. The coup attempt in the Soviet Union may have accelerated passage
of the Czech lustration law in 1991, but in the long run, the attraction of EU
membership proved more important.61
When Bulgaria and Romania were
176 Helga A. Welsh
excluded in the 2004 round of accession, lustration and ﬁle access became
tools to advance membership. File transfer to the National Council for the
Study of Security Archives picked up remarkable speed between 2005 and
2007.62
In the May 2006 Romanian parliamentary debates, some “[l]egislators
believed that lustration had helped other post-communist countries to gain
early acceptance into the EU.”63
Counterarguments were raised on the same premise. Lustration was sidestepped
by pointing out that Romania had not remedied corruption to gain
accession; others referenced European values and ECHR rulings to defend
their opposition to lustration.64
Romania passed a new ordinance in 2006 to
expand lustration, but in 2008, one year after it joined the EU, the law on ﬁle
access was declared unconstitutional. With a dose of sarcasm, Iancu points
to the “impeccable sense of timing”; efforts to show the cleansing of society
were no longer necessary.65
In Bulgaria in 2006–2007, the revived discussion
about secret service ﬁle disclosure mingled endogenous pressure with desire
for EU entry.66
This section explored the ways that different diffusion mechanisms framed
debates and set standards. The topic of transitional justice could be broached
when democracy and rule of law were at stake, although domestic policy
stakeholders absorbed messages selectively to further their cause. In the
absence of active leverage, politicians and citizens used at times contradictory
references to European institutions to further their goals or, in the case of the
ECHR, to seek legal redress.67
References to Europe and Europeanization,
noticeably accelerating by the end of the 1990s, also encouraged spillover in
the form of networking, making Central and Eastern Europeans players in
their own right.
spillover: institutionalization of transnational
networks
Cross-border academic exchange and cooperation on joint projects disseminate
ideas and build community. In the 1990s, the diffusion of ideas
and practices was mostly limited to bilateral contacts or meetings of epistemic
communities.68
Structured transnational ties were slow to evolve,69
but
when membership in the EU was around the corner, the scope of transitional
justice advocacy changed. Three organizations owe their creation to indirect
spillover effects from Europeanization processes, supported by research institutes,
many associated with state security service archives, that sprang up
in Central and Eastern Europe. In chronological order, the European
Network of Ofﬁcial Authorities in Charge of the Secret Police Files, the
Beyond the National: Pathways of Diffusion 177
Platform of European Memory and Conscience, and the European Network
Remembrance and Solidarity. A brief discussion of their origins and missions
shows how the focus of transitional justice shifted from legal-administrative
measures with limited time frames to broader issues of memory politics, which
is open-ended.
European Network of Ofﬁcial Authorities in Charge of Secret Police Files.
In reaction to international inquiries and anticipation of the accession of
Central and East European countries, the BStU promoted international
cooperation and added a liaison section for international affairs in 2002. It
was also crucial in setting up the European Network of Ofﬁcial Authorities in
Charge of Secret Police Files, which connects the diverse Central and
East European institutions and engages scholars and practitioners in the
exchange of ideas.70
The network ﬁrst met in Berlin in 2008; founding
members were Germany, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland,
Romania, and Slovakia. Recently, the Baltic States and Slovenia joined as
observers, taking part in activities without voting rights. Leadership rotates
among the member countries, with the chair institution hosting a meeting that
generally takes advantage of a relevant anniversary rather than adhering to an
annual cycle. The conference language is English. So far, most of its work has
focused on exchanging information, providing exogenous support when particular
institutions are under attack by domestic political actors, organizing a
traveling exhibition and conferences, and publishing a reader.71
Several working
groups are engaged in joint projects; a coordinating group facilitates
networking. The network endorses national approaches to the legacy of state
security ﬁles and the beneﬁts of exchanging views and mutual support; its work
is closely circumscribed by its focus on the archives of the state security
services.72
Platform of European Memory and Conscience. The Central and East
European states that joined the EU in 2004 and 2007 have challenged its
prevailing memory strands – centrality of the Holocaust – to incorporate the
communist past. The conference that led to the Prague Declaration (June 3,
2008) and the resulting European Parliament resolution (April 2, 2009) called
for addressing communism and Nazism as shared European historical legacies,
and August 23 has since been dedicated as European Day of
Remembrance. During the rotating EU presidency in 2009, the Czech
Republic instituted the Platform of European Memory and Conscience,
which places the crimes of the communist regimes alongside those of the
National Socialist regime in European memory discourse. Headquartered in
Prague, it was ofﬁcially founded in 2011. Its activities have focused on conferences
and exhibits; it recently published a reader, “Lest We Forget Memory of
178 Helga A. Welsh
Totalitarianism in Europe.”73
Its members are selected institutions from
Central and Eastern Europe, the Baltic States, Slovenia, and Ukraine, with
“Western” membership limited to Germany and Sweden. Its scope has been
hampered by the indifference of Western European countries, the selection
criteria for inclusion, and staunch anti-communist rhetoric.
European Network of Remembrance and Solidarity. Scholars have interacted
on transitional justice since the fall of communism, but cross-border
academic exchange and cooperation on joint projects to disseminate ideas and
build community have evolved considerably from occasional seminars to
more organized collaboration, and research institutes have sprung up across
the region.
The European Network, headquartered in Warsaw, is the somewhat unlikely
result of German-Polish disputes connected with a planned Center against
Expulsions in Berlin. In 2003, faced with accusations of a German-centered
approach to ethnic expulsions in twentieth-century Europe, the ruling coalition
of the Social Democratic Party and the Alliance 90/The Greens in Germany
sought to ease tensions that threatened cross-border reconciliation. The imminent
enlargement of the EU into Central and Eastern Europe motivated
continuation of the project, which was broadened to include the Visegrad
countries (Poland, Czech Republic, and Hungary) along with Germany and
Austria. In 2005, the Czech Republic and Austria distanced themselves, but the
European Network was born nevertheless. In Poland, with a new conservative
government, interest dwindled; in 2009, after another government turnover, the
initiative was institutionalized.74
Ministers of culture in Germany, Hungary,
Poland, and Slovakia signed the agreement. This “difﬁcult birth” of a politically
sensitive project owes much to political actors in Germany and Poland and the
cooperation of regional historians, who, according to one member, developed a
“tear-proof net of professional and personal contacts.”75
Scientiﬁc, educational,
and promotional projects involve the study and documentation of the dictatorial
experiences in twentieth-century Europe. Activities ranging from international
conferences and funding of media projects to the organization of youth seminars
aim to promote cross-national understanding through discussions and
knowledge transfer.
Pending EU membership and subsequent accession advanced the organization
of transnational advocacy networks with clear missions, supplementing,
but not abrogating, earlier activities. Pay-off is indirect, long-term, and
part of a vision of Europeanization that includes memory culture. With EU
membership, Central and East European countries moved from receiving
Europeanization processes to participating in agenda-setting and coalitionbuilding,
although their reach remains limited.
Beyond the National: Pathways of Diffusion 179
conclusion
This chapter suggests both the promise of and limits to diffusion of transitional
justice in Central and Eastern Europe. It draws attention to external factors in
the pursuit of transitional justice and encourages further studies on particular
mechanisms and the role of actors in the spread of ideas and policies. The
following ﬁndings should be of interest to scholars and practitioners alike.
First, although domestic actors drove the process of transitional justice,
their policies did not simply evolve from past legacies or political power
constellations; they were also shaped by exogenous inﬂuence. This study
conﬁrms that diffusion falls on fertile ground when actors in sender and
receiving countries share similar values and goals; the policy model is sufﬁciently
ﬂexible so that it can be transplanted; and transnational diffusion
channels exist.76
The case study on public ﬁle access and the institutionalization
of archives that house them illustrates the intersection of these factors.
However, even if conditions are favorable, outcomes are not automatic or
predetermined. Diffusion effects have been scattered; in no case was the
“foreign” model copied directly.
Second, reﬂecting the heterogeneity of settings across the region, the openness
to diffusion varied; the extent to which exogenous inﬂuence mattered
depended on the policy measure under consideration, the receptivity of
national actors, and their place in the national power hierarchy. (East)
Germany and Czechoslovakia (later the Czech Republic) primarily exported,
rather than received, diffusion practices; together with Poland, they emerged
as the core “shapers” of transnational activities to advance transitional justice
agendas in the region. Domestic pressure coupled with diffusion effects kept
discourses alive in countries such as Bulgaria and Romania where transitional
justice stalled; references to and practices from abroad reopened windows of
opportunities for action but with mixed results.
Third, ﬂows of information from abroad can assist in validating, supporting,
defending, or defeating certain policy proposals. Political actors applied
advice or responded to soft pressure selectively to strengthen divergent policy
positions, often using them rhetorically and symbolically rather than proscriptively.
Transitional justice actors also could choose from a repertoire of
actions, each with advantages and drawbacks, although the reception of
foreign models often lacked detail regarding its implementation in the sending
countries. If the multiplicity of actors brought novel and diverse viewpoints
or strategies, lack of coordinated efforts weakened their inﬂuence. Politicians
could resist domestic and international pressure, but cross-border linkages
made it increasingly difﬁcult to ignore demands for action.77
180 Helga A. Welsh
Fourth, time matters: transnational and international ties have moved from
the margins to assume greater scope and signiﬁcance. Initially, policies that
inspired and/or legitimized similar efforts in other settings were the predominant
form of inﬂuence. Bilateral contacts to spread these ideas emerged
slowly. Europeanization agendas existed from the beginning, but only gained
inﬂuence toward the end of the 1990s when working toward entry and later
membership in the EU promoted cross-national interaction. Ambiguous in
their outcomes, references to European processes inﬂuenced discursive
frames and tactical methods.78
Finally, the diffusion of transitional justice processes raises normative and
empirical issues about the desirability and feasibility of external involvement.
My ﬁndings emphasize the promotion of ideas and practices not by coercion,
but by dialogue and assistance. The different pathways, ranging from inspiration
to spillover, respect the domestic character of transitional justice processes,
yet give credence to the importance of transnational and international
channels. Such cross-border views and interactions are salient even if their
outcomes are open-ended.
notes
* I am grateful for the research assistance of Sara Olsen and Thomas Walker. Special
thanks to Dr. Sara Dahill-Brown for her critical reading of an earlier version of this
chapter.
1. For example, Susanne Buckley-Zistel, “Vergangenes Unrecht aufarbeiten. Eine
globale Perspektive,” Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte 63, no. 25–26 (June 17, 2013):
36–37.
2. The term transitional justice entered academic work in the mid-1990s; it has
spread, but in day-to-day parlance, other terms often prevail. I use it to denote
both legal-administrative measures and memorialization strategies.
3. Brigitte Weiffen, “From Domestic to International Instruments for Dealing with a
Violent Past: Causes, Concomitants and Consequences for Democratic
Transitions,” in Memory and Political Change, eds. Aleida Assmann and
Linda Shortt (Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 89–111.
4. Margaret E. Keck and Kathryn Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders. Advocacy
Networks in International Politics (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press,
1998), and Martha Finnemore and Kathryn Sikkink, “International Norm
Dynamics and Political Change,” International Organization 52 (1998):
887–917.
5. Ellen Lutz and Kathryn Sikkink, “The Justice Cascade: The Evolution and Impact
of Foreign Human Rights Trials in Latin America,” Chicago Journal of
International Law 2 (2001): 1–33.
6. Jelena Subotic´, “Transformation of International Justice Agency,” International
Journal of Transitional Justice 6 (2012): 106–125.
Beyond the National: Pathways of Diffusion 181
7. It excludes countries that broke off from the former Soviet Union or Yugoslavia but
includes East Germany due to its role in shaping discourses and advocacy networks
in the transitional justice policy domain.
8. John Gledhill, “Integrating the Past: Regional Integration and Historical
Reckoning in Central and Eastern Europe,” Nationalities Paper 39 (2011): 501.
Ursachi identiﬁed external factors as a missing piece of the transitional justice
puzzle; see Raluca Ursachi, “In Search of a Theoretical Model of Transitional
Justice,” in Lustration and Consolidation of Democracy and the Rule of Law in
CEE, eds. Vladimira Dvorˇa´kova´ and And¯elko Milardovic´ (Zagreb: Political
Science Research Centre, 2007), 78.
9. Eva Brems, “Transitional Justice in the Case of the European Court of Human
Rights,” International Journal of Transitional Justice 5 (2011): 282–303,
Cynthia Horne, “International Legal Rulings on Lustration Policies in Central
and Eastern Europe: Rule of Law in Historical Context,” Law and Social Inquiry 34
(2009): 713–744. From the large body of legal literature see Daniela Piana, Judicial
Accountabilities in New Europe: From Rule of Law to Quality of Justice (Farnham:
Ashgate, 2009).
10. In the mid-1990s, I asserted that cross-national contagion effects were one factor
that could explain transitional justice actions but did not elaborate them.
Helga Welsh, “Dealing with the Communist Past: Central and East European
Experiences,” Europe-Asia Studies 48 (1996): 413–438.
11. Mitchell Orenstein, Stephen Bloom, and Nicole Lindstrom, “A Fourth Dimension
of Transition,” in Transnational Actors in Central and East European Transitions,
eds. Mitchell A. Orenstein, Stephen Bloom, and Nicole Lindstrom (Pittsburgh:
University of Pittsburgh Press, 2008), 1–18; Valerie Bunce and Sharon Wolchik,
“Transnational Networks, Diffusion Dynamics, and Electoral Change in the
Postcommunist World,” in The Diffusion of Social Movements. Actors,
Mechanisms, and Political Effects, eds. Rebecca Kolins Givan, Kenneth
M. Roberts, and Sarah A. Soule (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 141.
12. Tricia D. Olsen, Leigh A. Payne, and Andrew G. Reiter, “Transitional Justice in
the World, 1970–2007: Insights from a New Dataset,” Journal of Peace Research 47
(2010): 803–809.
13. David Marsh, and J. C. Sharman, “Policy Diffusion and Policy Transfer,” Policy
Studies 30 (2009): 274–275; Svein Eriksen, “Institution Building in Central and
Eastern Europe: Foreign Inﬂuences and Domestic Responses, Review of Central
and East European Law 32 (2007): 333–369; Christoph Knill, “Introduction: Crossnational
Policy Convergence: Concepts, Approaches and Explanatory Factors,”
Journal of European Public Policy 12 (2005): 764–774; Jacint Jordana, David LeviFaur,
and Xavier Ferna´ndez Marin, “The Global Diffusion of Regulatory
Agencies: Channels of Transfer and Stages of Diffusion,” Comparative Political
Studies 44 (2011): 1346; Wade Jacoby, “Inspiration, Coalition, and Substitution:
External Inﬂuences on Post-communist Transformations,” World Politics 58
(2006): 628, 625.
14. Robert Harmsen and Thomas M. Wilson, “Introduction: Approaches to
Europeanization,” Yearbook of European Studies 14 (2000): 13–26;
Kevin Featherstone and Claudio M. Radaelli, eds., The Politics of
Europeanization (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003).
182 Helga A. Welsh
15. Olsen, Payne, and Reiter, “Transitional Justice,” 803.
16. Tricia D. Olsen, Leigh A. Payne, and Andrew G. Reiter, Transitional Justice in
Balance. Comparing Processes, Weighing Efﬁcacy (Washington, D.C.: United
States Institute of Peace Press, 2010), ch. 5.
17. Jon Elster, Closing the Books. Transitional Justice in Historical Perspective
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).
18. Monica Ciobanu, “Recent Restorative Justice Measures in Romania (2006–2010),
Problems of Post-Communism 60 (2013): 45–57.
19. Lavinia Stan, “Truth Commissions in Post-Communism: The Overlooked
Solution?” Open Political Science Journal 2 (2009): 1–13. Truth commissions
were also instituted in the Baltic States.
20. For overviews of transitional policies in different countries, see Lavinia Stan and
Nadya Nedelsky, eds., Encyclopedia of Transitional Justice (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 2013).
21. Matt Killingsworth, “Lustration and Legitimacy,” Global Society 24 (2010): 71–90;
Lavinia Stan, ed., Transitional Justice in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet
Union. Reckoning with the Communist Past (London: Routledge, 2009);
Kieran Williams, Brigid Fowler, and Aleks Szcerbiak, “Explaining Lustration in
Central Europe: A ‘Post-communist Politics’ Approach,” Democratization 12
(2005): 22–43; Aleks Szczerbiak, “Dealing with the Communist Past or the
Politics of the Present? Lustration in Post-Communist Poland,” Europe-Asia
Studies 54 (2002): 553–572.
22. For the ﬁrst explanation, see Nedelsky, “Divergent Responses to a Common Past:
Transitional Justice in the Czech Republic and Slovakia,” Theory and Society 33
(2004): 65–115; strategic elite choices are at the core of Monika Nalepa, Skeletons in
the Closet. Transitional Justice in Post-Communist Europe (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 2010).
23. Csilla Kiss, “Transitional Justice and the Reconstruction of Identity in PostCommunist
Countries,” in Diktaturu¨berwindung in Europa. Neue nationale und
transnationale Perspektiven, eds. Birgit Hofmann, Katja Wezel, Katrin Hammerstein,
Regina Fritz, and Julie Trappe (Heidelberg: Universita¨tsverlag, 2010), 69–83.
24. Deﬁning the term lustration is fraught with difﬁculty as it has been used differently
in different countries. For an authoritative account, see Monika Nalepa,
“Lustration,” in Encyclopedia of Transitional Justice, Volume 1: 46–51; and Brian
K. Grodsky, The Costs of Justice. How New Leaders Respond to Previous Rights
Abuses (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2010), 58.
25. Noel Calhoun, Dilemmas of Justice in Eastern Europe’s Democratic Transitions
(New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 127; Paulina Gulin´ska-Jurgiel,
“Transnational References in Times of Radical Changes. ‘Europe’ as a Function
of Coming to Terms with the Past,” paper presented at the 18th Conference of the
Council of European Studies, Barcelona, Spain, June 20–22, 2010; Andrzej Walicki,
“Transitional Justice and the Political Struggles of Post-Communist Poland,” in
Transitional Justice and the Rule of Law in New Democracies, ed. A.
James McAdams (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1997), 185–237.
Carlos Closa reminds us that civil society efforts challenged the Spanish model after
2000 with important consequences. See Carlos Closa, “Spain,” in Stan and
Nedelsky, Encyclopedia of Transitional Justice, Volume 2: 459–464.
Beyond the National: Pathways of Diffusion 183
26. Monika Nalepa, “To Punish the Guilty and Protect the Innocent: Comparing
Truth Revelation Procedures,” Journal of Theoretical Politics 20 (2008): 221–245.
Czech President Vaclav Havel reluctantly signed legislation in 2002, saying, “the
importance of truth is higher” than the arguments against opening the ﬁles. Cited
in Nedelsky, “Divergent Responses,” 95.
27. For a critical view, see the article by two prominent communist dissidents,
Adam Michnik and Vaclav Havel, “Justice as Revenge?” Journal of Democracy 4
(1993): 20–27.
28. The law has been updated and annexed eight times since then; the major provisions
from the original law still hold.
29. Csilla Kiss, “The Misuses of Manipulation: The Failure of Transitional Justice in
Post-Communist Hungary,” Europe-Asia Studies 58 (2006): 930; and Charles
Bertschi, “Lustration and the Transition to Democracy: The Cases of Poland
and Bulgaria,” East European Quarterly 28 (1995): 441.
30. Lavinia Stan, “Vigilante Justice in Post-communist Europe,” Communist and PostCommunist
Studies 44 (2011): 319–327; and Calhoun, Dilemmas of Justice, 131.
31. George Mink, “Institutions of National Memory in Post-Communist Europe:
From Transitional Justice to Political Uses of Biographies (1989–2010),” in
History, Memory and Politics in Central and Eastern Europe, eds. George Mink
and Laure Neumayer (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013); and James Mark,
The Unﬁnished Revolution. Making Sense of the Communist Past in CentralEastern
Europe (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010), 28.
32. Włodzimierz Borodziej, “Der Kommunismus in der deutschen
Erinnerungskultur. Kommentar aus polnischer Sicht,” in Woran erinnern? Der
Kommunismus in der deutschen Erinnerungskultur, eds. Peter Ma¨rz and HansJoachim
Veen (Cologne: Bo¨hlau Verlag, 2006), 209; Paweł Machcewicz, “The
Institute of National Remembrance and the Legacy of Communism in Poland,”
Politics, History and Collective Memory in East Central Europe, eds.
Zdzisław Krasnode˛bski, Stefan Garsztecki, and Ru¨diger Ritter (Hamburg:
Reinhold Kra¨mer Verlag, 2012), 82.
33. Email correspondence, translated and transmitted by Katarzyna Holopiak,
Division of International Relations, Ofﬁce of the President of the Institute of
National Remembrance, April 24, 2012.
34. Email correspondence with Roman David, February 15, 2012; Muriel Blaive,
“Einige Etappen der Bewa¨ltigung der kommunistischen Vergangenheit seit 1989
in der Republik Tschechien,” in Die U˝berlieferung der Diktaturen, 121–122.
35. Nadya Nedelsky, “Divergent Responses to a Common Past: Transitional Justice in
the Czech Republic and Slovakia,” Theory and Society 33 (2004): 98.
36. La´szlo´ Varga, “Vom Erbe des kommunistischen Staatssicherheitsdienstes in
Ungarn,” in Lustration, Akteno¨ffnung, demokratischer Umbruch in Polen,
Tschechien, der Slowakei und Ungarn. Referate der Tagung des BStU und der
Akademie fu¨r politische Bildung Tutzing vom 26.-28. 10. 1998, ed.
Dagmar Unverhau with the assistance of Roland Lucht (Mu¨nster: LIT Verlag,
2005), 161–176.
37. Cited in Mink, “Institutions of National Memory,” 160.
38. Gauck, in collaboration with Helga Hirsch, Winter im Sommer – Fru¨hling im
Herbst. Erinnerungen (Munich: Siedler, 2009), 319, my translation.
184 Helga A. Welsh
39. Cristina Petrescu and Dragos¸ Petrescu, “Retribution, Remembering, Representation:
On Romania’s Incomplete Break with the Communist Past,” in Geschichtsbilder in
den postdiktatorischen La¨ndern Europas. Auf der Suche nach historisch-politischen
Identita¨ten, eds. Gerhard Besier and Katarzyna Stokłosa (Berlin: LIT Verlag, 2009),
161, and n26.
40. Lavinia Stan, “Access to Securitate Files: The Trials and Tribulations of a
Romanian Law,” East European Politics and Societies 16 (2002): 155.
41. Bogdan Iancu, “Post-Accession Constitutionalism with a Human Face: Judicial
Reform and Lustration in Romania,” European Constitutional Law Review 6
(2010): 28–29.
42. Helmut Mu¨ller-Enbergs, “Aufarbeitung der Vergangenheit in Mittel- und
Osteuropa – Dimension der Staatssicherheiten,” Der allma¨chtige Geheimdienst.
Ein Relikt der Vergangenheit. Zur Transformation der Geheimdienste Mittel- und
Osteuropas nach 1990, eds. Wolbert K. Smidt, Irina Mohr, and Helmut Mu¨llerEnbergs
(Berlin: LIT Verlag, 2012), 43.
43. This statement does not include the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation of the Left Party
(formerly Party of Democratic Socialism) as it started work in Central and Eastern
Europe later and has not targeted transitional justice. The other political foundations
have cast their net of activities related to coming to terms with the past widely,
with topics ranging from the Holocaust, the expulsion of Germans, to the more
recent past.
44. From the substantial body of literature on the role of the German foundations
abroad, see Ann L. Phillips, Power and Inﬂuence after the Cold War. Germany in
East-Central Europe (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littleﬁeld Publishers, 2000);
Dorota Dakowska, “German Political Foundations: Transnational Party Gobetweens
in the Process of EU Enlargement,” Transnational European Union,
eds. Wolfram Kaiser and Peter Starie (London: Routledge, 2005). On the role of the
Konrad-Adenauer-Foundation, see Gabriele Baumann and Nina Mu¨ller,
“Vergangenheitsbewa¨ltigung und Erinnerungskultur in den La¨ndern Mittelostund
Su¨dosteuropas,” Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung Working Paper no. 164 (2006).
45. Email correspondence with Claudiu Secas¸iu, CNSAS board member since 1999
and, for a brief time in 2006, its head, February 22, 2012.
46. Email correspondence with Ekaterina Boncheva, facilitated and translated by
Antoinette Primatarova, March 7, 2012.
47. Lavinia Stan, “Witch-hunt or Moral Rebirth? Romanian Parliamentary Debates
on Lustration,” East European Politics and Societies 26 (2012): 275.
48. Email correspondence with Hristo Hristov, Bulgarian journalist, January 19, 2013.
49. Laura Davis, “The European Union and Transitional Justice,” International
Center for Transitional Justice – Initiative for Peace Building (June 2010), available
at: http://www.initativeforpeacebuilding.eu (accessed January 10, 2014; Thomas
Unger, “The European Union and Transitional Justice,” Center for the Law of
EU External Relations (CLEER) Working Paper no. 1 (2010); and Marı´a Avello,
“European Efforts in Transitional Justice,” FRIDE Working Paper no. 58
(June 2008).
50. Noel Calhoun, “The Ideological Dilemma of Lustration in Poland,” East
European Politics and Societies 16 (2002): 497–498; Magdalena Zolkos, “The
Conceptual Nexus of Human Rights and Democracy in the Polish Lustration
Beyond the National: Pathways of Diffusion 185
Debates 1989–97,” Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics 22 (2006):
228–248.
51. Marek Safjan, “Transitional Justice: The Polish Example, the Case of Lustration,”
European Journal of Legal Studies 1 (2007): 8, available at: http://www.ejls.eu/2/2
9UK.htm (accessed October 15, 2013).
52. Andra´s Sajo´, “Militant Democracy and Transition towards Democracy,” in
Militant Democracy, ed. Andra´s Sajo´ (The Hague: Eleven International
Publishing, 2004), 218–220.
53. Wojciech Sadurski, Rights Before Courts. A Study of Constitutional Courts in
Postcommunist States of CEE (Dordrecht: Springer, 2005), 249.
54. Michael Hamilton and Antoine Buyse, “Introduction,” in Transitional
Jurisprudence and the ECHR. Justice, Politics and Rights, eds. Antoine Buyse and
Michael Hamilton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 16.
55. Brems, “Transitional Justice in the Case of the European Court.”
56. Hamilton and Buyse, “Introduction,” 14.
57. Sadurski, Rights Before Courts, 232.
58. Jiri Prˇiba´n, “From ‘Which Rule of Law?’ to ‘The Rule of Which Law?’ PostCommunist
Experiences of European Legal Integration,” Hague Journal on the
Rule of Law 1 (2009): 337–358.
59. Adam Czarnota, “Lustration, Decommunisation and the Rule of Law,” Hague
Journal on the Rule of Law, 1(2009): 335.
60. Milada Vaduchova, Europe Undivided: Leverage and Integration after Communism
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 65.
61. Blaive, “Einige Etappen,” 120.
62. Lavinia Stan, Transitional Justice in Post-Communist Romania: The Politics of
Memory (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 73.
63. Stan, “Witch-hunt or Moral Rebirth,” 286.
64. Ibid.
65. Iancu, “Post-accession Constitutionalism, 57; Stan, Transitional Justice in PostCommunist
Romania, 95.
66. Email correspondence with Ekaterina Boncheva, March 7, 2012; Hristo Hristov
and Alexander Kashumov, “Justice and Accountability Mechanisms in Bulgaria in
the Transition Period (1989–2008),” in After Oppression: Transitional Justice in
Latin America and Eastern Europe, eds. Vesselin Popovski and Mo´nica Serrano
(Tokyo: United Nations University Press, 2012), 292.
67. Gledhill, “Integrating the Past,” 481–506.
68. Lutz, and Sikkink, “Justice Cascade,” 1.
69. A partial exception is the International Association of Former Political Prisoners –
Victims of Communism (Inter-Asso), founded in 1991. Its members meet on an
annual basis to discuss practices in their countries, but its effectiveness and
visibility have been hampered from the beginning by in-ﬁghting about who should
be represented in the organization, language barriers, and, in particular, ﬁnancial
problems.
70. Senate of the Parliament of the Czech Republic, Prague Declaration on European
Conscience and Communism, June 3, 2008, available at: http://www.praguedecla
ration.eu/ (accessed February 23, 2012).
186 Helga A. Welsh
71. The “European Network of Ofﬁcial Authorities in Charge of the Secret-Police Files.”
A Reader on Their Legal Foundations, Structures and Activities (Berlin: Der
Bundesbeauftragte fu¨r die Unterlagen des Staatssicherheitsdienstes der ehemaligen
Deutschen Demokratischen Republik, December 2009), available at: http://
www.bstu.bund.de/DE/Wissen/Publikationen/Publikationen/E_netzwerkreader_
englisch.html (accessed January 14, 2014).
72. I am grateful to Bert Rosenthal (BStU) for information on the work of the network.
The interviews were conducted on January 19, 2012, and March 1, 2013.
73. The target group is clearly spelled out in the subtitle: A Reader for Older Secondary
School Students Anywhere in Europe, ed. Gillian Purves (Prague: Institute for the
Study of Totalitarian Regimes, 2013).
74. The historical evolution is analyzed by Stefan Troebst, “Wiederbelebung einer
‘Totgeburt’? Das Europa¨ische Netzwerk Erinnerung und Solidarita¨t,” PolenAnalysen
33, no. 20 (May 2008): 2–7; Matthias Weber, “Gemeinsam Erinnern.
Das Europa¨ische Netzwerk ‘Erinnerung und Solidarita¨t,’” available at: http://www
.bundesregierung.de/Content/DE/_Anlagen/BKM/2010-02-18-weber-zum-eruopa
eischen-netzwerk-erinnerung-solidaritaet.pdf?__blob=publicationFile (accessed
August 12, 2013); Stephan Raabe with Denny Schlu¨ter, “Auf den Spuren des
‘Europa¨ischen Netzwerks Erinnerung und Solidarita¨t,’” La¨nderbericht, KonradAdenauer-Stiftung:
Auslandsbu¨ro Polen (January 6, 2011), available at: http://www
.kas.de/polen/de/publications/21555/ (accessed June 20, 2013).
75. Stefan Troebst, Vertreibungsdiskurs und europa¨ische Erinnerungskultur.
Deutsch-polnische Initiativen zur Institutionalisierung. Eine Dokumentation.
Vero¨ffentlichungen der Deutsch-Polnischen Gesellschaft Bundesverband e.V.
vol. 11 (Osnabru¨ck: Fibre, 2006), 22–23.
76. These ﬁndings support those of Valerie Bunce and Sharon Wolchik, “International
Diffusion and Democratic Change,” The Dynamics of Democratization.
Dictatorship, Development, and Diffusion, ed. Nathan J. Brown (Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011), 286–287.
77. Iosif Kovras, “Explaining Prolonged Silences in Transitional Justice: The
Disappeared in Cyprus and Spain,” Comparative Political Studies 46 (2013):
730–756.
78. EU impact on member states may be patchy, uneven but not spurious. Tanja
A. Bo¨rzel and Thomas Risse, “When Europeanisation Meets Diffusion: Exploring
New Territory,” West European Politics 35 (2012): 193–207.
Beyond the National: Pathways of Diffusion 187