NICEP Seminar: Monika Nalepa (Chicago)

Link to paper (.pdf) 

Abstract: Peaceful regime transitions present new democracies with the dilemma of how to reckon with members of their enforcement apparatuses. One solution is to disband authoritarian agencies and build new ones. A competing approach is to fire only the “bad apples.” Strapped for competent agents, new democracies may take the latter approach, particularly if the preceding autocratic regime employed predominantly competent agents. We use a formal model to compare conducting 1) a “thorough purge”— dismissing everyone —2) a “selective purge,” where agents are evaluated on a case-by-case basis, and 3) retaining everyone. We predict that competence of agents of the prior regime moderates how their ideological extremity favors selective purges over thorough or no purges. We corroborate our theory using a paired comparison approach, employing new data from the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) in Poland on the operation of verification commissions in 49 sub-national regions in 1990.