5
Transitional Justice Effects in the Czech Republic
Roman David
The Czech Republic has been a fascinating laboratory of dealing with the
legacy of the communist past. Unlike in other countries in Central and
Eastern Europe, the Communist Party has never returned to power since its
defeat in the first democratic elections in 1990. Its dwindling influence led to a
transitional justice process, the scale and variety of which is unprecedented in
the region. The twenty-fifth anniversary of the demise of communism allows
us to assess transitional justice in the light of popular expectations and
the theoretical dilemmas postulated at its onset. This assessment can serve
countries that have recently launched or are about to launch transitional
justice, such as Libya, Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen, and Burma. Many other
countries reflect back on their transitional justice policies, laggards try to
draw level with their neighbors, and new conflicts create new injustices and
lead to new calls for dealing with the past. What can be learned from the
Czech experience with transitional justice?
There we see that a broad program of transitional justice is not a guarantee of
its popular appreciation. The Czech Republic can boast ten transitional justice
policies, which include a comprehensive program for the rehabilitation of
former political prisoners and the thorough lustration of senior administrative
and security personnel in the state apparatus. Two special government offices
deal with the past. Nevertheless, the public view of the process of dealing with
the past is lukewarm. Only 17 percent of respondents agreed that social divisions
stemming from the past have been overcome, while 50.4 percent disagreed in
the survey conducted in 2010.1
How can we explain this paradox?
I suggest that the overwhelming emphasis on justice at the expense of
reconciliation explains why the level of appreciation for how the past is dealt
with does not correspond to the effort made in major areas of transitional
justice. The imperatives of justice are important, but the expectations of
justice have remained unrealistic in the Czech Republic. In the absence of
97
reconciliation, justice has been viewed as an extension of power, and a legal
seal of the communist defeat. The country’s turbulent historical experiences
and cultural patterns have strengthened the view of justice as victors’ justice.
Consequently, the Communist Party was sidelined, but it remains defiant
about the past and has a stable electorate that assures its future. The Party was
not eliminated from the democratic process, and its support surged in the
parliamentary elections of 2013.2
This chapter theoretically develops and empirically examines this argument.
To pursue the argument on the theoretical level, I first discuss the roles of justice
and reconciliation as two paramount transitional justice objectives. I then
empirically examine the transitional justice program, including the reparative,
revelatory, and retributive measures, that is implemented in the Czech
Republic in the absence of a reconciliation program. I show that this program
has some potential to meet social expectations of justice, but a very limited
potential to contribute to reconciliation.
The chapter draws on a nationwide 2010 survey about dealing with the past
in the Czech Republic. I will first describe the public assessment of the major
measures of transitional justice, then analyze their contribution to justice and
reconciliation. I conclude by identifying three factors that account for the
lackluster assessment of the broad transitional justice program in the Czech
Republic: the inability to convey the message of reconciliation as a worthy
objective, the absence of a reconciliation program, and the limited capacity of
existing measures to contribute to reconciliation.
This chapter fills notable gaps in the literature. The prominence of transitional
justice in the current political science, legal, and sociological scholarship
contrasts with the persistent gap in empirical research on the effects of
transitional justice. Although many studies have explained its origin,3
we still
crave answers to the plain bread-and-butter questions about its effects, most
notably whether and which transitional justice measures can contribute to
the promotion of historical justice and social reconciliation. Moreover,
comparative studies that examine the utility of a variety of transitional justice
measures are almost nonexistent.4
transitional justice without reconciliation
The preference for justice at the expense of reconciliation in the Czech
Republic can be observed in three dimensions. First, reconciliation was
seldom considered and pursued as an objective of transitional justice.
Instead, statements by political leaders suggest that justice and the rectification
of injustices were the major objectives. Second, reconciliatory measures are
98 Roman David
not part of the transitional justice program. Reconciliation is almost absent
from the public discourse. Third, existing measures have only a limited
capacity to foster reconciliation. This final argument is based on the assumption
that all transitional justice measures, including measures of retribution
and revelation, can be assessed with regard to their ability to deliver both
justice and reconciliation. These three factors may provide us with a possible
explanation of the poor assessment of transitional justice.
This chapter will not reiterate the objectives and nuances of each measure,
rather explain their essential features in the light of the major theoretical
debates on transitional justice. The description of transitional justice in the
Czech Republic has been provided in several publications, most recently in
the Encyclopedia of Transitional Justice.5
Justice as the Objective of Dealing with the Past in the Czech Republic
Owing to their strategic relevance and intellectual appeal, several themes have
become prominent in the transitional justice literature. One of these is the
dilemma of “justice or reconciliation” rooted in what Huntington called the
torturer’s problem: prosecute and punish, or forgive and forget.6
Since it was
formulated in 1991, the dilemma has lost much of its intellectual attractiveness
because most countries have chosen to deal with the past and adopt
transitional justice. Nevertheless, the question of justice and forgiveness has
been included in the objectives that transitional countries (should) achieve. It
is agreed that countries launch transitional justice to pursue backward-looking
(accountability, justice, and punishment) and forward-looking (peace and
democracy, including tolerance, a human rights culture, reconciliation, and
forgiveness) objectives.7
For Teitel, the focus of transitional justice is both
backward-looking and forward-looking, retrospective and prospective.8
Transitional justice is a response to the injustices and divisions of the
past regime and an effort to build a new democracy. Situated between an
authoritarian and a democratic regime, transitional justice must facilitate the
transformation of political regimes, political cultures, and corresponding
mindsets.9
At the same time, the very notion of a dilemma suggests that some of the
objectives of transitional justice may be mutually exclusive, contradictory, and
irreconcilable10
: the pursuit of one objective may undermine another one. For
example, some scholars argue that the pursuit of justice may jeopardize peace,
as in Argentina where the prosecution of the military junta backfired and
forced the adoption of the Full Stop Law that halted new investigations.11
Likewise, measures to achieve justice by purging the state apparatus may put
Transitional Justice Effects in the Czech Republic 99
the nascent democracy at risk, with Libya a recent case in point. By purging
Qaddafi’s loyalists from the state apparatus via the Political Isolation Law, the
state’s capacity to provide security for its citizens and contain the armed militia
was weakened, and the country risked becoming a failed state in 2013.12
The
promotion of reconciliation in turn may solidify the impunity of major
perpetrators of crimes and revive past conflict, as in the fiasco of the amnesty
process in Sierra Leone in 1999.13
I reject the black-and-white view of justice or reconciliation. Without
considering a degree of reconciliation, justice in itself may not be a sufficient
objective to guide the process of dealing with the past. Justice without reconciliation
is emptied of its positive restorative content. Such naked or raw
justice is merely a function of political power, an infliction of hardship and
penalties upon offenders without considering the outcome. It is based on
the victors’ assumption that punishment of communist wrongdoers would
make them compliant with the new system. It seems naı¨ve to expect that
punishment and lustration would turn communists and secret police informers
into democrats. Indeed, research conducted in Central Europe suggests
that exclusion augments historical divisions.14
The roots of this approach in the territory of the Czech Republic are
historically and culturally typical. In trying to deal with different pasts, Czech
decision-makers always placed a strong emphasis on justice. The Czechs
experienced seven political regimes, or types of rules, in the twentieth century:
the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the inter-war democratic Czechoslovakia
(1918–1938), the Nazi Protectorate (1939–1945), the postwar democracy
(1945–1948), the Stalinist communist regime (in the 1950s), the thawing of
repression (in the mid-1960s) and the short intermezzo of the Prague Spring
(1968), the normalization era (from the 1970s until 1989), and then democracy.
Each political change was followed by efforts to negate the past, starting in 1918
with the spontaneous destruction in Prague’s Old Town Square of the
Mariensa¨ule, a monument which allegedly symbolized the humiliation of the
Czech nation by the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Each political change resulted
in widespread purges, the shaming of the representatives of the old regime and
the glorification of its victims. Following a brutal retributive wave after World
War II, the most dramatic purges of the state apparatus occurred in the wake of
the communist takeover in 1948 and in the aftermath of the Soviet-led military
intervention of the Warsaw Pact armies in 1968.
It is thus unsurprising that, in dealing with the communist past, legislators
often stated their determination to “temper” (zmı´rnit) or “condemn” (odsoudit)
the injustices of the past, instead of including the need to overcome deep
historical divisions in the society. Justice without reconciliation acquired a
100 Roman David
meaning of triumph and domination over the forces of the past. The cultural
expectations of justice after transition signify the ritual conclusion of the past
regime, a symbolic finale, in which anyone connected with that regime should
be “finished” by being dismissed, punished, or excluded from the public eye.
While demands for such raw justice may be legitimate with respect to communist
torturers and apparatchiks, they are less justifiable for people who joined the
party for career prospects or gave in to the secret police under duress. The new
elites excluded these people too, making enemies out of those who may not have
considered themselves enemies in the first place.15
Justice as the means of domination and retribution has become deeply
entrenched in the value-normative system of the Czech political culture. The
close connection between justice and power has been apparent after every
post-communist election. Although elites might know that a change of government
as a result of an election is not a change of political regime, the state
administration is routinely cleansed of the supporters and appointees of the
previous government.16
The reason may be that the new government does not
tolerate the presence of personnel loyal to the previous government and needs
to distribute political posts to its supporters.17
Electoral victory translates into
power, power translates into purge.
Similarly to justice after elections, political revenge is a key feature of the
Presidency of Milosˇ Zeman (elected in 2013). Those who criticized his actions
have been subsequently “punished” by not being invited to a state function,
not being given an award, or not being given an appointment.18
Whether
transitional justice has created the blueprint for this revengeful behavior or
whether transitional justice and revenge are both expressions of a particular
understanding of justice in the Czech political cultural landscape is irrelevant.
The link between justice and power is entrenched in the Czech political
culture.
The Absence of Reconciliation
The emphasis on “raw justice” has accompanied the absence of reconciliation.
Because of the prominent role of justice in modern Czech history, the pursuit of
reconciliation in post-communist times has been placed in its shadow.
Reconciliation was completely sidelined as an objective of transitional justice.
No explicit reconciliation program has been formulated, no truth commission
was established, no reconciliatory forum was held, and no dialog about the past
took place to help understand the individuals’ motives in the past. Apologies
issued by those responsible for the injustices of the communist regime have been
rare.19
Personal confessions, employed in South Africa and Poland as
Transitional Justice Effects in the Czech Republic 101
alternatives to trials and lustration,20
have never been presented as a path of selfreflection
and coming to terms with the past.
Reconciliation was explicitly prioritized only during the regime change in
1989, when Va´clav Havel coined the non-retributive phrase “we are not like
them.” In saying this, Havel was aware of the retributive tendencies of the
Czech political culture, manifested most dramatically in the postwar expulsion
of three million ethnic Germans from the Sudetenland. He tried to
convey a message that would make ordinary Czechs feel that they stood on
the moral high ground in contrast to their communist oppressors and their
postwar ancestors. However, the post-1989 political elites, except Havel, have
never considered reconciliatory measures as viable objectives for dealing with
the past.21
President Havel supported transitional justice but was unable to
shape its direction after 1991, when he lost a significant battle in the Federal
Assembly over his version of the lustration law.22
The Communist Party, which remains defiant in its stance on the past, may
be partly to blame for the lack of reconciliation. The recognition of the human
rights abuses committed under its rule was a reasonable precondition attached
by many of the party’s opponents to its acceptance to the political process. The
lack of self-reflection was the main reason why Havel never invited the Party to
any political consultation and why other formations have avoided any governing
coalition with the communists. At the same time, after being politically
isolated, it may be hard for the communist leadership to persuade its members
of the need to abandon denial and apologize for the past.23
Gestures of reconciliation were rare and made on an individual basis. For
instance, an heiress of prosecutor Karel Vasˇ, notorious orchestrator of the show
trials of the 1950s, gave part of her inheritance to the daughters of former
political prisoners.24
Individual forgiveness, sometimes expressed unconditionally,
was also reported among former political prisoners.25
However,
given the socio-cultural context, former political prisoners frequently mentioned
an inimical response by those who had contributed to their ordeal as
the major obstacle to their forgiveness.
Transitional Justice Measures in the Czech Republic
Transitional justice measures pursued in the Czech Republic include reparatory,
retributive, and revelatory measures.26
Although a reconciliatory program
is absent, we cannot rule out the possibility that the existing transitional
justice program can – at least marginally – contribute to reconciliation.
To make this assessment credible, one needs to accept the counterintuitive
arguments that different measures (including retribution, revelation, and
102 Roman David
reparation) may achieve the backward-looking objective of justice or the
forward-looking objective of reconciliation, or both, or none of these.
Reparation laws, aimed at rectifying injustices experienced by victims, were
among the first measures approved.27
They included the compensation and
rehabilitation of the victims of communism on the eve of the first democratic
elections in 1990 and the restitution of nationalized or confiscated property in
1991. The restitution and rehabilitation measures, repeatedly amended afterwards,
were extraordinary measures that affected hundreds of thousands of
people.28
Instead of an individual case-by-case judicial approach, wrongful
punishments were annulled and properties were returned ex lege. Town halls,
the presidency, schools, and other organizations further acknowledged
victims’ sacrifices by a variety of informal measures, such as invitations to
speak, medals of honor, and awards.
The reparation program was, however, pursued in a one-dimensional
and one-sided way: it was justice-oriented and purely victim-centered. Any
reconciliatory forum between victims and perpetrators that would enable
them to have a dialog about the past in a controlled environment was absent.
Nevertheless, many victims encountered their oppressors in their daily life,
and expressed dissatisfaction with the arrogance of the perpetrators. Moreover,
the broader society was not engaged in the reparation process, which resulted
in a feeling of continuing social isolation on the part of victims. Both the
attitude of the perpetrators and the isolation undermined the reparation
process and the resources spent.29
Retributive measures, which dealt with the perpetrators of human rights
abuses and other wrongdoers, included the nationalization of the property of
the Communist Party and the Socialist Youth Association in the autumn of
1990; the lustration law that purged senior communist officials, secret police
members and their collaborators from the state administration in the autumn
of 1991; and the 1993 law on the illegality of the communist regime, which
lifted the statute of limitations, enabled the prosecution of communist crimes
in the courts, and symbolically condemned the previous regime.30
Common
sense suggests that prosecuting, punishing, and sanctioning wrongdoers would
lead to justice31
and undermine reconciliation, because retribution leads to
the persistence or deepening of past divisions.32
However, scholars have
argued that retributive measures may contribute to reconciliation if successful
criminal trials produce a deterrent effect that impacts the entire society and
prevents the recurrence of violations.33
The delivery of justice can also relieve
victims of their desire for retribution and provide them with closure.34
Conversely, failure to punish, condemn, and dismiss wrongdoers means
they retain their privileged positions in society.35
Transitional Justice Effects in the Czech Republic 103
The absence of reconciliatory objectives affected the utility of other
transitional justice measures, including retribution, since, under certain
conditions, measures of retributive justice may serve the objectives of both
justice and reconciliation. If reconciliation were articulated and considered
as a goal of transitional justice, then the purpose of punishment and
lustration would be restoration rather than retribution or both. Instead, in
the absence of the reconciliatory discourse, punishment may not provide
closure even if an offender has served his or her sentence.
Similarly, the success of lustration may be conditional on a degree of
reconciliation. Although the lustration law was originally passed as an interim
measure that was to be valid for five years until the new democracy had taken
root, its validity was later extended to ten years, and it finally became a
permanent feature of the democratization process. The initial lustration
discourse suggested that certain persons should be removed from public
positions because they had been unable to withstand pressure from the totalitarian
regime. A degree of empathy with some low-key collaborators and an
understanding of their plight intermingled with the security needs of the
nascent democracy. But this discourse has largely disappeared, and lustration
has become the end point for all secret collaborators. Its goal has thus been
changed, with the conciliatory tone being replaced by a clearly retributive
one. The lustration law valid for five years signaled that collaborators were
unable to withstand the pressure of blackmail under the communist system.
Once the transitional period passed and democracy was established, they were
expected to come back and contribute to the new regime with their expertise.
The message of indefinite lustration is different. Collaborators are unchangeable,
intractable, and forever tainted.
The revelatory measures provide the most innovative avenue for transitional
justice, as they aim at disclosing the truth about the past regime.36
The
expansion of truth commissions, the opening of secret archives, and the
establishment of institutes of national memory have revived scholarly interest
in the traditional value of truth. In the Czech Republic, revelation included
the unofficial publication of the names of secret informers, from 1991 onwards,
followed by their official publication in 2000; and the gradual opening of the
secret police archives beginning in 1996. Since 1990, new history textbooks
have become available, although many of them initially only deleted explicit
references to the ideology of Marxism-Leninism.
The notion of truth epitomizes the ambiguity of transitional justice. Does
truth lead to justice or reconciliation or both? It has been argued that measures
of truth contribute to justice by establishing political and individual accountability
for the past. People need to know who the perpetrators are and who gave
104 Roman David
the perpetrators the orders to carry out their wrongdoing. In contrast, the
South African truth process was mandated to contribute to reconciliation by
satisfying victims’ demands for truth and exposing the illegitimate deeds of the
previous regime to the whole society.37
Empirical research confirmed that
truth could contribute to reconciliation, at least among some social groups.38
However, truth also undermines reconciliation by opening old wounds and
reviving past hostilities.39
Skeptics see the impact of truth on reconciliation as
overstated and contentious.40
Forensic and epistemological limitations
prevent countries from establishing their “authoritative accounts” of the past.41
Moreover, the truth from secret archives has been hotly contested.
According to Maria Łos´, post-communist Europe has seen a variety of “truth
narratives,” ranging from dystopian to affirmative discourses. While the former
expected to see a negative impact of truth on democratic consolidation, the
latter warned of the risks of continuing secrecy about the past.42
We would
expect that truth from the secret archives would have a negative effect in
society. In the absence of a reconciliatory ethos, truth loses its reintegrative
potential. In the presence of a justice ethos, truth serves as a means of shaming,
which results in the social isolation of collaborators, decreasing their prospects
of reintegration.43
Two special institutions have assisted in dealing with the past. The first is
the Office for Documenting and Investigating the Crimes of Communism,
established in 1995. The second is the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian
Regimes. Founded in 2008, the Institute is a Czech version of the institutes of
national memories that operate in many Eastern European countries.44
While
the former would conceptually fit into the retributive category, the latter was
mandated to be the guardian of the secret archives.
politics of transitional justice
Although many transitional justice measures were approved more than twenty
years ago in the Czech Republic, they are still being implemented, amended,
or reviewed. Most measures, though initially controversial, have now been
generally accepted as part of the Czech legal system. They do not stir up as
much political controversy and media interest as when they first appeared. For
instance, a search for the keyword “lustration” in two of the major online
newspapers, Aktua´lneˇ.cz and iHned.cz, reveals a declining interest in the
topic. After excluding matches that concerned types of lustration unrelated
to transitional justice and lustration in other countries, the search in the
business-oriented iHned returned forty-eight articles mentioning “lustration”
in 2007, but only six articles in 2012. Likewise, in the investigative centrist
Transitional Justice Effects in the Czech Republic 105
newspaper Aktua´lneˇ there were twenty articles on lustration in 2007, but only
five in 2012.45
The number is expected to increase in 2013 and 2014 with
the surge in the popularity of new political parties and the need for new
politicians, previously unlustrated and suspected of collaboration, to provide
lustration certificates.46
Is this silence a sign of reconciliation? Reduced media interest might signal
that the past has become relatively settled at the macro-political level.
Successive post-communist governments and parliamentary majorities have
not repealed any major transitional justice law. Center-right formations have
always advocated for transitional justice. The center-left Social Democratic
Party (Cˇ SSD), which contains both post-communists and dissidents, was
never able to block transitional justice measures; when it led a coalition
government in the early 2000s, it supported further reparation for the victims
of communism. Havel’s successor President Vaclav Klaus was never seriously
interested in dealing with the past. For him, the process was a rearview mirror
that could obstruct forward-looking objectives. While in office he most
famously slammed former dissidents and political prisoners by saying that it
was the ordinary people who had resisted communism by their inefficiency.47
Unsurprisingly, transitional justice remains on the agenda of the
Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia (KSCˇ M), which nevertheless
has failed to place the topic on the national agenda. Despite persistent support
from voters, which increased to 14.91 percent in 2013, the absence of the
Communist Party in any government coalition after 1990 reveals its diminishing
political influence. The lack of coalition potential hinders any attempts to
revoke policies dealing with the past. The party’s last attempt to do so dates
back to 2008 when it failed to repeal the lustration law.48
Thus, if transitional
justice is an extension of power, then the issue of the past remains “settled” as
long as the party does not gain popularity.
The only two controversies about the past that still hit the headlines of the
major newspapers and split public opinion concern the Institute for the Study of
Totalitarian Regimes and the restitution of church property. As to the former,
the controversies stem not from its activities but from the composition of its
personnel and from infighting between different cliques of intellectuals with
different personal and ideological trajectories. Its founding director, the anticommunist
Pavel Zˇ a´cˇek, was replaced in 2010, after a few interim appointments,
by Daniel Herman, a laicized Catholic priest. In spite of support for him from
the Confederation of Political Prisoners (KPV), Herman was sacked in 2013 and
replaced by an unknown state official, Pavla Foglova´. The abrupt change in the
Institute leadership prompted commentators to call the process a “putsch” and a
“purge.” The new leadership is apparently more left-leaning ideologically, and
106 Roman David
less anti-communist, than the previous center-right leadership. Members of the
current leadership have criticized their predecessors for lack of professionalism,
while members of the previous leadership have criticized the lack of personal
integrity in the new leaders vis-a`-vis their pasts, especially the Communist Party
membership of many board members.49
The second controversy surrounds the restitution of the property of the
Catholic Church and other churches. Initially, the public was receptive to the
needs of various groups for justice, including the property demands of
churches. More recently, however, the traditionally atheist or anti-clerical
Czechs have become less amenable to compromise about church restitution;
the adverse economic environment created by the global economic crisis also
negatively affected people’s opinions. The law that enabled the restitution of
the property to various churches was as unpopular as the center-right coalition
that proposed it.50
The bill was supported by 16 percent of Czechs and opposed
by 65 percent.51
The ruling coalition then forced the bill through the
Chamber of Deputies in 2012, despite a veto by the Senate, which was
dominated by Social Democrats (Cˇ SSD), a veto by the center-right
President Klaus, and a constitutional complaint by a group of Senators.52
President Zeman suggested that parliament should amend the law to decrease
the amount of compensation for the churches.53
The division between people
over the restitution issue may be caused less by past injustices than by present
social, political, and economic problems, such as increasing unemployment,
corruption and government instability.54
the search for transitional justice answers
To empirically examine the effect of transitional justice on perceptions of
justice and reconciliation, an opinion poll survey was conducted in the Czech
Republic. The survey, supported by the British Academy and Newcastle
University in the United Kingdom, was carried out on a nationwide representative
sample of 1,079 citizens aged over 15 by the Center for Public Opinion
Research in 2010. Respondents were asked to rate the success or failure of ten
transitional justice measures and of the two government bodies that deal with
the past. Emphasis was placed on the subjective assessment of transitional
justice and reconciliation. The survey offers a unique glimpse into questions
of transitional justice in a country that pursued a strong retributive policy with
almost no emphasis on reconciliation.
The analytical strategy chosen to present the survey data is two-fold. First, in
Chart 5.1 I present descriptive statistics about the popular views of the objectives
of transitional justice. Table 5.1 and Chart 5.2 summarize the perception
Transitional Justice Effects in the Czech Republic 107
36.6
17.8
30.7
50.4
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
Justice Reconciliation
Agree
Disagree
chart 5.1: The Perception of the Objectives of Transitional Justice
in the Czech Republic
table 5.1: Popular Assessment of Transitional Justice Measures
in the Czech Republic
The realization of the following measures
was successful or unsuccessful
Successful
(percent)
Unsuccessful
(percent)
Financial compensation of former political prisoners. 40.9 20.6
Social acknowledgment of former political prisoners
[social rehabilitation].
48.3 18.8
Return of nationalized property to original owners or
their heirs [restitution].
50.9 14.1
Punishment of perpetrators of communist crimes. 22.0 42.8
Moral condemnation of communist crimes. 32.6 32.0
Confiscation of the property of the Communist Party. 28.2 36.8
Departure of people associated with the communist
regime from leading posts in the state
administration and the police [lustration].
23.1 43.5
Official publication of the names of secret
collaborators with the secret police.
35.5 26.0
Opening the archives of the secret police to the public. 37.8 22.6
Publication of new history textbooks. 40.8 17.5
The following institutions contributed
to dealing with the past:
Agree
(percent)
Disagree
(percent)
Office for the Documenting and Investigating the
Crimes of Communism (U´ DV)
58.8 12.4
Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes (U´ STR) 56.2 13.1
108 Roman David
of the ten transitional justice measures and the standing of the two special
institutes for dealing with the past. Second, the chapter presents the results of
an analysis in which justice and reconciliation are regressed on the ten
measures and the two institutes, in Table 5.2. To make these findings easily
comprehensible, Chart 5.3 plots the regression of the coefficients from the two
regression models on justice and reconciliation axes.
The Perception of Transitional Justice
To enquire about justice, we asked respondents whether the greatest injustices
of the previous regime have been undone. Some 36.6 percent of respondents
agreed with the statement, while 30.7 percent disagreed. Given the absence of
a positive reconciliation program in the Czech Republic, reconciliation was
conceptualized in a negative form as the absence of reconciliation.
Respondents were asked about the persistence of social divisions inherited
from the past. Some 50.4 percent agreed that social divisions inherited from
the previous regime have continued, indicating a lack of reconciliation. Only
17.8 percent had an opposite view. These preliminary results (Chart 5.1)
indicate that the ambitious transitional justice program in the Czech
Republic delivered some justice, but little reconciliation.
Chart 5.2 reveals a remarkable pattern in the public assessment of transitional
justice in the Czech Republic. The assessment of individual measures
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
Agree
Disagree
U
D
V
U
STRR
estitution
R
ehabilitation
R
eparationTextbooksArchives
Exposure
inform
ers
C
ondem
nation
C
onfiscationLustration
Punishm
ent
chart 5.2: Popular Assessment of Transitional Justice Measures in the Czech
Republic
Transitional Justice Effects in the Czech Republic 109
follows their conceptual clusters: after an overwhelmingly positive appraisal
of the two special government institutions, the most positively assessed
category is reparation, followed by revelatory measures, and ending with
retributive measures. The two institutions mandated to deal with the past
received support from more than 50 percent of the public. The Office was
viewed positively by 58.8 percent of respondents, while 12.4 percent viewed it
negatively. The Institute was endorsed by 56.2 percent, while 13.1 percent
disagreed with this. The strong support for these institutes suggests the
extraordinary nature of transitional justice: new special institutions are
seen as considerably more efficient in dealing with the past than the courts,
which have only delivered a few dozen punishments to perpetrators of
human rights violations.55
table 5.2: OLS Linear Regression Analyses of Justice and Reconciliation
Justice Reconciliation
B SE B SE
(Constant) −.06 (.22) 1.16 (.24)
Age (5 categories) .03 (.03) −.07* (.03)
Sex (Female) .13* (.06) −.05 (.07)
Education (4 categories) −.02 (.03) .03 (.04)
Income (categories) .02^ (.01) .01 (.01)
Pre-1989 Communist Party member .13 (.17) .29 (.18)
Gray Zone −.04 (.21) −.10 (.24)
Financial compensation .19*** (.05) .00 (.05)
Social rehabilitation .03 (.04) .03 (.05)
Restitution of property .08* (.04) −.12** (.04)
Punishment of perpetrators .14*** (.04) .06 (.05)
Condemnation of the previous regime .10* (.04) .00 (.05)
Expropriation of the Communist Party .06 (.04) −.01 (.04)
Lustration .13*** (.04) .13** (.04)
Publication of names of informers .10* (.05) .04 (.05)
Access to secret police archives −.06 (.05) .05 (.05)
Publication of new history textbooks −.04 (.04) −.02 (.04)
U´ DV .14** (.05) .01 (.06)
U´ STR −.07 (.05) .10^ (.06)
SEE .897 .996
R2
.333 .073
Adjusted R2
.319 .054
N 886 886
B – unstandardized regression coefficient; SE – standard error
^ p <.1 * p <.05 ** p <.01 ** p <.001
110 Roman David
The positive assessment of reparation measures, which comprised the
restitution of property and the rehabilitation/compensation of victims, ranges
from over 40 percent to over 50 percent. The strong support for these measures
may be an expression of natural sympathy with the victims.56
It may also reflect
the scale of the repression, which included over 100,000 political prisoners in
the Czech Republic.57
The restitution of property to their original owners and
heirs was seen as successful by 50.9 percent of respondents, while 14.1 percent
saw it as unsuccessful. This is one of the most surprising findings, because
restitution has been seen as redressing old injustices and creating new social
problems. For example, heirs could not freely deal with their returned property,
while tenants faced an enormous uncertainty about their future in the
booming housing market. The social acknowledgment of former political
prisoners was seen as successful by 48.3 percent, while 18.8 percent viewed it
as unsuccessful. In comparison, financial compensation was seen as successful
by 40.9 percent, while 20.6 percent viewed it as unsuccessful. Although the
difference between social acknowledgment and financial compensation is not
The map displays the ability of transitional justice measures to achieve justice and reconciliation.
The policies are placed on the map based on their regression coefficients.
Measures of revelation
Measures of reparation
Measures of retribution
–.15
–.10
–.05
.00
.05
.10
.15
–.10 –.05 .00 .05 .10 .15 .25.20
RECONCILIATION
Lustration
Punishment
Name & shame
UDV ReparationCondemnation
Expropriation
Acknow-
ledgment
Restitution
Access archives
USTR
Textbooks
JUSTICE
chart 5.3: The Opinion Map of the Efficiency of Transitional Justice Measures
The map displays the ability of transitional justice measures to achieve justice
and reconciliation. The policies are placed on the map based on their
regression coefficients.
Transitional Justice Effects in the Czech Republic 111
large, it is surprising that financial compensation was not assessed in a more
favorable light. Financial compensation for the victims of communism was
amended several times, and the victims received compensation in the form of
direct payments and an increase in their pensions.58
Revelation, which comprised the opening of secret archives, the exposure
of secret informers and the publication of new history textbooks, was
the third most positively assessed category, with support between 35 and
40 percent. The publication of new history textbooks was seen as successful
by 40.8 percent of respondents and unsuccessful by 22.6 percent. The reasons
for dissatisfaction among some parents were that the stereotypes of “class
struggle” and other Marxist-Leninist concepts remained intact.59
Opening
the secret police archives was seen as successful by 37.8 percent of respondents
and as unsuccessful by 22.6 percent. Today there are hardly any
obstacles to public access to the secret archives. The official publication of
the names of secret informers was seen as successful by 35.5 percent and
unsuccessful by 26 percent. The narrowing gap between endorsement and
disapproval of this measure suggests that this publication was not without
controversy. Most notably, some celebrities demanded that their names be
removed from the lists; some historians, however, saw such removal as a
falsification of historical records.60
The policy that received the most negative assessment was that of retribution:
the condemnation of the communist regime, the confiscation of
the properties owned by the Communist Party and its youth league, and
lustration were seen as successful by between 22 and over 32 percent of
respondents, while between 32 and over 42 percent saw them as unsuccessful.
Each measure in this cluster may have been assessed in that way for a
different reason. The confiscation of communist property was a one-off
measure that took place a long time ago; moral condemnation may be
seen as pointless in face of the defiance of the Communist Party about the
past. Lustration, although quite successful, was expected by the public to
cleanse the entire state administration, which was not within its scope. The
number of gross abusers of human rights who were punished was objectively
low. Lustration and punishment were thus the worst assessed transitional
justice measures: lustration was seen as successful by 23.1 percent of respondents,
and as unsuccessful by 43.5 percent; punishment was seen as successful
by 22.0 percent of respondents and as unsuccessful by 42.8 percent of them.
The weak assessment of retributive measures may be understood in light
of the popular preference for justice in the Czech political and cultural
landscape. However, to get more conclusive evidence, I now turn to the
multivariate analysis.
112 Roman David
does transitional justice help to advance justice
and reconciliation?
In the second step, this analysis used linear regression analyses, in which
justice and reconciliation were the dependent variables,61
and the ten transitional
justice measures and the two special institutes were the independent
variables.62
I control for basic socio-demographic variables, including age, sex,
education, and income. Since this research was conducted in a divided
society, I controlled for membership in the former Communist Party. Some
10.2 percent of respondents revealed that they were previously members of
the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. Finally, I also controlled for the
so-called “gray zone communists,” people who were party members for
utilitarian reasons but were not politically identified with the party. The gray
zone variable was given for pre-1989 party members who did not vote for the
Communist Party in the most recent elections.
The comparison of R-square coefficients of the two regression models
reveals an apparent association of transitional justice measures with justice
rather than reconciliation (Table 5.2). Transitional justice and the other six
independent variables predict 33.3 percent of the variance of justice but only
7.3 percent of the variance of reconciliation. Another manifestation of the
association between transitional justice and justice as a goal is apparent from
plotting the regression coefficients on the justice versus reconciliation axes
(Chart 5.3). Eight of the twelve transitional justice measures are placed in the
belt along the justice axis but do not go beyond the reconciliation axis by 0.05.
Therefore, transitional justice can satisfy popular demands for justice but can
hardly meet dissatisfaction with the lack of reconciliation.
The financial compensation of victims has by far the largest impact
on justice. If policymakers were to amend transitional justice, increasing
financial compensation would be the best way. Unlike the punishment of
wrongdoers, which has the second largest effect on the perception of justice
and is a matter of the independent criminal justice process, financial
compensation is within the purview of government power. Financial compensation
of victims would, however, have almost no impact on reconciliation,
according to this model.
The negative impact of property restitution on reconciliation is surprising.
Restitution was supposed to be the major mechanism for redressing inequalities
created in the past, but it has left both supporters and opponents of the
previous regime unhappy. Those who received their property back were also
given the obligation to keep intact the tenancy contracts they inherited. While
property owners lamented that they could not use their properties effectively,
Transitional Justice Effects in the Czech Republic 113
tenants experienced uncertainty about the future. Many of these relationships
were strained, as owners frequently tried to force tenants to move out.
The effect of punishment on justice runs according to our expectations.
The findings suggest a strong link between the punishment of perpetrators of
wrongdoing and the perception of justice. However, justice is unable to
contribute to the positive perception of reconciliation. The most counterintuitive
finding is the positive effect of lustration on both justice and reconciliation.
The effect of this retributive measure on justice is obvious: lustration
has been considered an effective means of administering justice. The effect of
lustration on reconciliation is unexpected, but it makes sense in the light of the
widely shared popular belief about the dominance of post-communist forces
over the politics of the present. People suggest that there will be no reconciliation
unless the social stratification stemming from the past is rectified.
Lustration is undoubtedly one of the means of this rectification.
Chart 5.3 also shows that the role of truth revelation in the process of dealing
with the past is partly in line with expectations. Although the Institute and the
new history textbooks have no significant effect on justice, the revelation of the
names of secret police informers has a significant positive effect on justice.
This finding is in line with our expectations about the prominence of the
justice perspective. Truth does not serve as a proxy for justice unless it names
and shames secret collaborators. While the revelation of secret informers
serves the objective of justice via the imposition of shaming penalties, the
Institute has no retributive role. At the same time, measures of truth may lead
to reconciliation. The assessment of the Institute is positively correlated with
reconciliation, but it marginally fails to reach the accepted significance level.
conclusion
The Czech Republic has implemented the most comprehensive transitional
justice program in Central and Eastern Europe. This contrasts with the
meager perceptions of the program’s two paramount objectives: justice and
reconciliation. I hypothesized that the paradox may have been caused by the
overwhelming emphasis on justice at the expense of reconciliation. When
only justice is accentuated as an objective of dealing with the past, a society
risks pursuing reparation without closure, shaming without reintegration, and
punishment without changing the offenders’ behavior. Without reconciliation,
transitional justice is just a power game with new actors in the same roles
of exclusion.
The survey shows that Czechs are moderately satisfied with achieving justice
but remain dissatisfied with the lack of reconciliation. This is because, apart
114 Roman David
from the notable exception of President Havel, reconciliation was never explicitly
articulated as an objective of transitional justice by the political elites. Since
the dominant discourse revolved around justice, respondents may seldom have
been confronted with the continuation of inherited social divisions. Second,
measures that could lead to reconciliation, such as a reconciliatory lustration
system, were not approved. The measures adopted in the Czech Republic were
largely designed to achieve the goals of justice and, in fact, have succeeded in
shaping public perception that justice has been achieved.
The chapter shows that the financial compensation of victims and the
restitution of property are major predictors of the perception of justice.
Property restitution has been a divisive issue, negatively affecting social reconciliation.
Restitution provides the strongest evidence for my argument about the
preference for justice at the expense of reconciliation. The mere achievement of
justice cannot help to overcome divisions inherited from the past.
In absolute terms, revelatory measures are assessed to lie between reparatory
measures and retributive measures. The multivariate analysis suggests
that truth is unable to contribute to justice, unless it names and shames
wrongdoers. The publication of the names of secret informers, which produced
a shaming effect in the Czech Republic, is associated with an increase
in the perception of justice. “Truth” successfully served as a proxy for justice,
but its potential contribution to reconciliation was never positively sanctioned
by political elites.
Finally, in line with expectations, retributive measures are closely associated
with justice. In the absence of reconciliation, lustration contributed to a
perception that reconciliation has been achieved. The positive effect of
lustration on the perception of reconciliation must be interpreted in the
context of social stratification. Overcoming social divisions inherited from
the past may signify both reconciliation and the redistribution of social
positions after transition. Lustration is one of the means of this redistribution.
Clearly, these answers may be tentative and context dependent, since they
rely on one survey in the Czech Republic. Note that the Czech Republic has
entered a post-transitional justice stage. Although the existing transitional justice
measures are amended, no new measures are proposed. Controversies over
lustration, restitution, and the Illegitimacy of Communism Act are no longer
apparent, while the remaining topics surrounding the personal infighting in
the institutes for dealing with the past attract little public attention. The church
property restitution was the last topic to divide society, but the argument was not
between the redress of historical injustices and the creation of new ones, but
between the unresolved issues of the past and the interests of contemporary
society.
Transitional Justice Effects in the Czech Republic 115
The major lesson of this case study concerns the importance of reconciliation.
Societies dealing with the legacy of human rights violations committed
under past regimes or in the contexts of postwar transformations have typically
debated the imperatives of justice in their particular political and legal
context. The calls for reconciliation only emerged when prosecutions and
purges were impossible because of the balance of power in transition.
Reconciliation, frequently pursued with the help of some truth-finding bodies,
has thus been considered the second best option in dealing with the past. The
case of the Czech Republic, which accentuated the imperatives of justice
throughout its political transition, shows that justice itself may be insufficient
in dealing with the past. To be accepted, justice requires a degree of reconciliation.
Indeed, this survey finding echoes previous research conducted in the
Czech Republic. A survey of former political prisoners showed that lack of
reconciliation, manifested in the inimical attitudes by former adversaries and
the response of the neighbors of former prisoners, is a significant inhibitor of
political prisoners’ self-assessment of their own rehabilitation.63
Therefore,
reconciliation is not an alternative to justice but its prerequisite. Without a
clear reconciliatory program, victims would not achieve closure and society
would remain divided, undermining the notion of justice. The statement that
“reconciliation is not an option” may sound like moralizing kitsch, but
empirical evidence suggests that reconciliation needs to be promoted regardless
of whether justice or amnesty takes place.
notes
1. Roman David, The Utility of Transitional Justice in the Czech Republic, Grant
SG-54378, 2009, funded by the British Academy.
2. Cˇ esky´ Statisticky´ U´ rˇad, “Vy´sledky voleb a referend,” no date, available at:
http://volby.cz (accessed January 20, 2014).
3. Helga Welsh, “Dealing with the Communist Past: Central and East European
Experiences after 1990,” Europe-Asia Studies 48, no. 3 (1996): 413–428;
Aleks Szczerbiak, “Dealing with the Communist Past or the Politics of the Present?
Lustration in Post-communist Poland,” Europe-Asia Studies 54, no. 4 (2002): 553–572;
Lavinia Stan, ed., Transitional Justice in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet
Union: Reckoning with the Communist Past (London: Routledge, 2009);
Nadya Nedelsky, “Divergent Responses to a Common Past: Transitional Justice in
the Czech Republic and Slovakia,” Theory and Society 33, no. 1 (2004): 65–115.
4. Some excellent studies have been conducted on the effects of the Truth and
Reconciliation Commission in South Africa and the International Criminal
Tribunal of Former Yugoslavia in Bosnia-Herzegovina. However, we still do not
know how transitional justice measures compare to each other. For instance, are
criminal trials viewed as more effective than lustration in satisfying the social needs
116 Roman David
for justice and overcoming the divisions of the past? Are records originating from
the secret archives more effective than the truth processed through government
sponsored institutes of national memory, which spread in Eastern Europe in the
last decade?
5. Lavinia Stan and Nadya Nedelsky, eds., Encyclopedia of Transitional Justice (New
York: Cambridge University Press, 2013); Roman David and Susanne Y. P. Choi,
“Victims on Transitional Justice: Lessons from the Reparation of Human Rights
Abuses in the Czech Republic,” Human Rights Quarterly 27, no. 2 (2005): 392–435;
Nadya Nedelsky, “Czechoslovakia, and the Czech and Slovak Republics,” in
Transitional Justice in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union: Reckoning
with the Communist Past, ed. Lavinia Stan (London: Routledge, 2009), pp. 37–75;
Roman David, “Twenty Years of Transitional Justice in the Czech Lands,” EuropeAsia
Studies 64, no. 4 (2012): 761–784.
6. Samuel Huntington, The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth
Century (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991).
7. The backward-looking objectives are typical of most of the legal scholarship. For
forward-looking objectives, see Gibson, “Truth, Justice, and Reconciliation”;
Roman David and Susanne Y. P. Choi, “Forgiveness and Transitional Justice in
the Czech Republic,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 50, no. 3 (2006): 339–367.
8. Ruti Teitel, Transitional Justice (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000).
9. Roman David, Lustration and Transitional Justice: Personnel Systems in the Czech
Republic, Hungary, and Poland (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011).
10. Bronwyn A. Leebaw, “The Irreconcilable Goals of Transitional Justice,” Human
Rights Quarterly 30 (2008): 95–118.
11. Amnesty International, “Argentina: The Full Stop and Due Obedience Laws and
International Law” (April 1, 2003), available at: http://www.refworld.org/docid/3f1
3d9d34.html (accessed November 15, 2013).
12. Roman David and Houda Mzioudet, “Personnel Change or Personal Change?
Rethinking Libya’s Political Isolation Law,” Brookings Doha Center – Stanford
University Project on Arab Transitions Paper Series, 4 (March 2014).
13. William Schabas, “The Relationship between Truth Commissions and
International Courts: The Case of Sierra Leone,” Human Rights Quarterly 25,
no. 4 (2003): 1035–1066.
14. David, Lustration and Transitional Justice.
15. The typical responses by members of the gray zone to the revelation of their
collaboration were denial and excuses, not defiance and inimical statements.
Zdena Slaivorova-Skvorecka, Osocˇenı´: pravdive´ prˇı´be´hy lidı´ z “Cibulkova
seznamu” (Brno: Host, 2000). Denial and excuses for one’s involvement in the
past regime indicate an effort of the individual to be accepted in the democratic
society.
16. Michaela Nova´kova´, “Ekonomove´ zmeˇrˇili, jak se po kazˇdy´ch volba´ch opakuje hra
o ‘trafiky,’” iDnes (September 11, 2013), available at: http://zpravy.idnes.cz/ies-vydal-
studii-o-propojeni-politiky-s-verejnym-sektorem-pan-/domaci.aspx?c=A130911_170759_
domaci_ael (accessed October 13, 2013).
17. Naturally, the practice of the spoils system comes at considerable cost, manifested
in the inability to submit professionally designed projects to access European
Union subsidies.
Transitional Justice Effects in the Czech Republic 117
18. This practice began under President Va´clav Klaus, but is a hallmark of the
Presidency of Milosˇ Zeman.
19. David, Lustration and Transitional Justice.
20. Roman David, “In Exchange for Truth: The Polish Lustration and the South
African Amnesty Process,” Politikon: South African Journal of Political Studies 32,
no. 1 (2006): 81–99.
21. David and Choi, “Victims on Transitional Justice.”
22. David, Lustration and Transitional Justice.
23. Ibid.
24. Cˇ TK[Czech Press Agency], “Dcera Rude´ho kata rozdala deˇdictvı´ teˇm, ktery´m
ublı´zˇil,” Aktualne.cz (August 30, 2013), available at: http://aktualne.centrum.cz/
domaci/spolecnost/clanek.phtml?id=789080&utm_source=email&utm_medium=
email&utm_campaign=posli (accessed October 13, 2013).
25. David and Choi, “Forgiveness and Transitional Justice.”
26. David, Lustration and Transitional Justice.
27. Transitional justice in the Czech Republic first emphasized the victims of communism,
then turned against those responsible for communist crimes and finally
pursued the policy of truth. Reparation led to retribution, followed by revelation.
By contrast, in Latin America the truth phase, characterized by the rise of truth
commissions, led to the justice phase with the overturning of many amnesty laws
and the launch of key prosecutions. Aryeh Neier, “What Should Be Done about
the Guilty?” The New York Review of Books (February 1, 1990).
28. David and Choi, “Victims on Transitional Justice.”
29. Ibid.
30. David, “Twenty Years of Transitional Justice.”
31. Lustration laws imposing sanctions on wrongdoers were passed to grant “minimal”
justice. Maria Łos´, “Lustration and Truth Claims: Unfinished Revolutions in
Central Europe,” Law and Social Inquiry 20, no. 1 (1995): 117–161.
32. David, Lustration and Transitional Justice.
33. Deterrence is a common justification for criminal trials. Hunjoon Kim and
Kathryn Sikkink, “Explaining the Deterrence Effect of Human Rights Prosecutions
for Transitional Countries,” International Studies Quarterly 54, no. 4 (2010): 939–963.
Skeptics argue that the evidence of deterrence still needs to be produced. Julian Ku
and Jide Nzelibe, “Do International Criminal Tribunals Deter or Exacerbate
Humanitarian Atrocities?” Washington University Law Review 84 (2006): 777–833.
34. Roman David and Susanne Y.P. Choi, “Getting Even, or Getting Equal? Retributive
Desires and Transitional Justice,” Political Psychology 30, no. 2 (2009): 161–192.
35. Susanne Y. P. Choi and Roman David, “Lustration Systems and Trust: Evidence
from Survey Experiments in the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland,”
American Journal of Sociology 117, no. 4 (2012): 1172–1201.
36. David, Lustration and Transitional Justice.
37. Priscilla Hayner, Unspeakable Truths: Confronting State Terror and Atrocity (New
York: Routledge, 2001).
38. James L. Gibson, “Does Truth Lead to Reconciliation? Testing the Causal
Assumptions of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Process,” American
Journal of Political Science 48, no. 2 (2004): 201–217.
39. David and Choi, “Victims on Transitional Justice.”
118 Roman David
40. David Mendeloff, “Truth-Seeking, Truth-Telling, and Postconflict Peacebuilding:
Curb the Enthusiasm?” International Studies Review 6 (2004): 355–80.
41. Audrey Chapman and Patrick Ball, “The Truth of Truth Commissions:
Comparative Lessons from Haiti, South Africa, and Guatemala,” Human Rights
Quarterly 23, no.1 (2001): 1–43.
42. Łos´, “Lustration and Truth Claims.”
43. Lustration law concerned a limited number of positions, mainly in the state
administration. However, since the lists of secret police informers were easily
accessible, it was implemented beyond the scope of the law.
44. “Otevrˇel se U´ stav pro studium totalitnı´ch rezˇimu˚,” iHned (February 1, 2008),
available at: http://zpravy.ihned.cz/c1-22871540-otevrel-se-ustav-pro-studium-totalit
nich-rezimu (accessed October 13, 2013).
45. The search was performed for the period of the calendar year. It included articles,
news reports and articles written by bloggers attached to the newspapers.
46. For the case of Andrej Babisˇ, leader of new party Ano [Yes], see Cˇ TK, “Babis Says
He Need not Be in Czech Government, Will not Seek Lustration” (November 6,
2013), available at: http://www.ceskenoviny.cz/zpravy/babis-says-he-need-not-be-inczech-govt-will-not-seek-lustration/1004873
(accessed November 14, 2013).
47. The Social Democrat proposal may have sought to dispel the growing mistrust over
the comeback to government of people associated with the communist regime.
People who could not work in the state apparatus due to the lustration laws worked
as advisors to ministers. David, Lustration and Transitional Justice.
48. “Poslanci schva´lili, zˇe diskriminovat bude trestne´,” Aktualne.cz (March 19, 2008),
available at: http://aktualne.centrum.cz/domaci/politika/clanek.phtml?id=600192
(accessed October 13, 2013).
49. Tereza Krobova´, “Rada U´ STR rozhodla: Hermana nahradı´ Pavla Foglova´,”
Aktualne.cz (April 10, 2013), available at: http://aktualne.centrum.cz/domaci/zivot-vcesku/clanek.phtml?id=776543
(accessed October 13, 2013); “Cˇ istka v U´ STR: Nova´
sˇe´fka se zbavuje lidı´ napojeny´ch na exrˇeditele, nechteˇjı´ s nı´ mluvit,” iHned.cz (April
18, 2013), available at: http://zpravy.ihned.cz/c1-59717020-sefka-ustr-foglova-zahajilacistku
(accessed October 13, 2013); Martin Fendrych, “Zacˇı´na´ rudy´ u´klid, antikomunista
Herman koncˇı´,” Aktualne.cz (April 11, 2013), available at: http://aktualne
.centrum.cz/blogy-a-nazory/komentare/clanek.phtml?id=776608 (accessed October
13, 2013); Martin Fendrych, “Gottwaldovec ka´druje Cˇ unase, Aktualne.cz (August 19,
2013), available at: http://aktualne.centrum.cz/blogy-a-nazory/komentare/clanek
.phtml?id=788006 (accessed October 13, 2013).
50. Public support for the center-right coalition government of Prime Minister Petr Necˇas
was 17 percent in October 2012 when Act No. 428/2012 Sb., on the Property Settlement
with Churches and Religious Communities was debated. “Necˇasoveˇ vla´deˇ uzˇ veˇrˇı´ jen
necela´ peˇtina lidı´. Ztra´cı´ i podporu stoupencu˚ ODS,” iHned (October 5, 2012),
available at: http://zpravy.ihned.cz/c1-57779990-necasove-vlade-uz-veri-jen-nece
la-petina-lidi-ztraci-i-podporu-stoupencu-ods (accessed October 13, 2013).
51. Centrum pro Vy´zkum verˇejne´ho mı´nenı´, “Na´zor verˇejnosti na roli cı´rkvı´ ve
spolecˇnosti a na navra´cenı´ cı´rkevnı´ho majetku” (October 23, 2012), available at:
http://cvvm.soc.cas.cz/media/com_form2content/documents/c1/a6901/f3/pi121023b
.pdf (accessed October 13, 2013).
52. The Constitutional Court refused the complaint in its decision Pl. U´ S 10/13 in 2013.
Transitional Justice Effects in the Czech Republic 119
53. Josef Kopecky´, “Zeman chce zmeˇnu restitucı´, aby cı´rkve dostaly me´neˇ peneˇz,” iDnes
(September 1, 2013), available at: http://zpravy.idnes.cz/zeman-je-pro-zmenu-zakonao-cirkevnich-restitucich-f8g-/domaci.aspx?c=A130901_112141_domaci_kop
(accessed
October 13, 2013).
54. The unemployment remains at 7 percent, above the 4.5 level of 2008. In 2013, the
Czech Republic ranked 57 out of 175 countries in the Corruption Perception
Index. In 2008, it ranked 45–46 out of 180. There have been nine governments in
office between 2004 and 2014.
55. Stan and Nedelsky, Encyclopedia of Transitional Justice.
56. Charles Batson, The Altruism Question: Toward a Social Psychological Answer
(Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum, 1991).
57. David and Choi, “Victims on Transitional Justice.”
58. Ibid.
59. David, “Twenty Years of Transitional Justice.”
60. For the notable case of Jirina Bohdalova, see Jiri Priban, “Oppressors and Their
Victims: The Czech Lustration Law and the Rule of Law,” in Justice as Prevention:
Vetting Public Employees in Transitional Societies, eds. Alexander Mayer-Rieckh
and Pablo De Grieff (New York: Social Science Research Council, 2007).
61. An OLS linear regression model was preferred to an ordinal logit because the
former is easier to comprehend. The dependent variables were coded from the
most negative (0) to the most positive (4).
62. The coding of transitional measures on the Likert scale ranged from the most
negative (0) to the most positive (4).
63. David and Choi, “Victims on Transitional Justice.”
120 Roman David