Individual NATO Research Fellowships (1994-1996)

The research reports reproduced here are the responsibility of the individual authors. Their reproduction does not imply any form of official or unofficial endorsement by NATO. The reports are offered in unedited form, as presented by their authors, with a view to make their findings available to a wide audience. Definition, Establishment and Enforcement of New Rules of the Political Game in the Process of Democratic Consolidation in East-Central Europe Artur Gruszczak (Poland) [Back to Index] Establishment and Enforcement of the New Rules: Problems and Possibilities The politics of democratic consolidation in East-Central Europe has been increasingly centered on the introduction and enforcement of the new rules of the political game. Since the regime change began, two interconnected processes, every one showing own peculiarities, have acquired specific features that determined the new democratic game. The first one referred to the construction of a new juridical system implying de-ideologization of laws, independence of the jurisdiction and unconditional compliance with the law. The second process was rather marked by continuity with respect to rule-making and transfer of a plenty of customary arrangements, informal patterns as well as institutional solutions from the former regime. For--as we have noticed--the rules of the game usually refer to informal or unwritten rules, attitudes, forms of behaviour, expectations, customs and habits, the empirical aspects related to the second processes are going to be the main point of our further analysis. In a stable democratic system, rules of the game are defined clearly and precisely, stand firm and unquestionable. Their acceptance by the major social and political sectors makes the government able to take decisions in the prosecution of its programme without resistance from the political society and without necessity to employ coercion or force. Likewise, the political actors may pursue their particular objectives without fear that this would bring about the overthrow of the government. In non-consolidated democracies, sources of the constitution result more ambiguous. Law does not hold an absolute importance (7) Those who in a great part define the rules, enforce them and therefore determine political power do not necessarily pertain to a new democratic political order but seem to be hidden in "authoritarian enclaves". Rules are formulated according to the balance of political power and reflect divisions and conflicts between political actors. These rules use to be provisional and are dictated by the existing state of political affairs, except for few fundamental rules which are key to the process of democratic consolidation. Alternations in power, including changes of government, may only bring about reformulation of the rules of the game although without infringing basic principles of the systemic order. They may, however, modify the rules in such a way that the political equilibrium is lost and requires a structural readjustment to a new situation. In unstable weak democracies strategies of the main political actors are determined by their possible impact on the strength of the government and aim at overthrowing the government. A widespread illusion among the countries extricating from Communism was the "electoral fallacy", a conviction that the new electoral rules would be enough to install and secure democracy (Staniszkis, 1991, p. 220). The post-communist states have begun to transform their legislation introducing a great number of new laws intended to adjust to Western liberal-democratic standards (Schöpflin, 1994, p. 132) as well as new institutions designed to enforce properly the new rules into the logic of the democratic political game. Not only must democratic institutions be established but, more difficult, the norms and habits that make these institutions function properly must be learned or relearned by the people in order for pluralist democracy to become internalized by society (Kramer, 1991, p. 25). Rules of the political game should be supported by rules of the law, providing adequate necessary legal infrastructure which must conform to certain values like regularity, predictability, precision, restraint, publicity (Krygier, 1996, pp. 13-14). By the same token, sets of informal rules, making the core of the new political regime, must be buttressed by legal institutions in order to support democratic consolidation and avoid political or "premature" (Rychard, 1995, p. 315) consolidation. The dilemma of interest representation The transition from monocentric socio-political order to pluralist democratic polity puts a particular stress on mechanisms, institutions and channels of interest articulation and representation. Liberalization of communist regimes also meant the emergence and reinforcement of new ways and means of interest representation through newly-established groups and institutions of civil society striving at widening the scope of autonomous articulation and realization of certain aspirations, needs and even demands. An important peculiarity of the transition processes in Poland and Czechoslovakia was the takeover by big nation-wide social/political movements (Solidarity and Civic Forum/Society Against Violence) of the intermediary space between the still powerful state apparatus and the atomized fragmented society. Mass politics in these two countries obscured some deep-seated divisions and contradictions between various groupings of civil society. At the stage of democratic consolidation, the efforts to construct an authentic intermediary level embodying democratic blueprint for a stable political regime had to remodel the transitory state-society relationships. It turned out, however, that a real problem is that the majority of political parties do not mediate between the state and civil society, nor do they anchor both popular demands and support to the state. Yet if they do function as vehicles of pressure and support, they soon acquire a populist bias, subject to certain radicalized although active and politically expansive groups. There are numerous illustrations of this phenomenon: the right-ward evolution of the Hungarian Democratic Forum; the quick turn to nationalist populism of the Movement for Democratic Slovakia under Me_iar's leadership; the infamous fall of post-Solidarity center-right Catholic coalitions of the Olszewski and Suchocka governments; the policies of the leftist coalition in Poland since 1993. The fragmentation of the political stage and its "normalization" in accordance with the standards of democratic politics made it impossible to fulfill in a short span of time basic interests and demands of numerous social groups. Meanwhile, many times the institutions of political society as well as the state institutions did not perform their functions, undermining therefore their viability and legitimacy (see Appendix 2, table 4). Dangerous tensions created within a critical network of popular groups, political parties and state institutions generate a high dynamics of discontent and mutual resentments. This provokes two interesting phenomena, characteristic rather for stable democracies: overload and ungovernability (8). To avoid those phenomena, it is important that the governments, political elites or, in large terms, the ruling groups be able to stabilize the system of interest representation around collective identities (Cirtautas, 1994, p. 37). As Gross observed in the case of Poland, the strategy of transition to democracy and free market was applied and pursued amidst an essential conflict between formal and substantive (or procedure- and outcome-oriented) understanding of the common good. On the one hand, there was a widespread need to respect the law and, on the other hand, to ensure that the outcomes of the transition would not lead to aborting of the whole process by the old regime. That conflict led directly to a rapid depletion of authority of all state institutions (Gross, 1994, p. 178). Institutionalization of interest representation is the only solution to the conflictive relationship between competing, or contradictory, collective identities. In this context, the role of the state, both in itself and in relation to political society/political parties, is precarious. The state as an embodiment of the common will (common good, general interest) should protect the interests of all groups accepting its constitutional framework under its jurisdiction and should establish the ethnic or territorial boundaries of that jurisdiction (Cirtautas, 1994, p. 40). On the other hand, the autonomization of civil and political societies is no less important. The reinforcement and institutionalization of numerous organizations and movements representing or defending the whole variety of political, economic, cultural, professional and other interests must be developing in the interests of both the state institutions and societal bodies (Ethier, 1990, p. 16). For the sake of democratic consolidation, the working out of a constructive and efficient structural relationship between the state and society should proceed with much regard for the vital interests of different groups and segments of the society. Loopholes and "brown areas" Defining and establishing new rules of the game rather seldom is universally accepted and promoted by political actors. Diversity of interests and political goals contributes to the pursuance of different strategies and sometimes pushes the actors too far, beyond the limits and borders set by the parameters of the political game. When the limits are unclear and called in question, when they hinder the game and distort its logic, when the results of the game are contingent and subject to uncertainty, some ways and means emerge in order to fulfill the strategic aims of the game participants. The use of certain instruments in political competition depends on the position of political actors in the structures of authority and networks of political affiliation as well as on the availability of extra-legal sanctions and means of rule enforcement. Such terms of the game contribute greatly to the emergence of specific policy areas excluded from democratic government's control or from the scope of electoral majorities setting normative bases of a regime. O'Donnell coined the term "brown areas" to describe policy areas where democratically elected government officials, political parties and other actors base their activities on such mechanisms as patronage, personalism, clientelism, "amoral familism" (Banfield, 1958), and the like, which leads to the fragmentation of the state (O'Donnell, 1993, pp. 170-71). The normative fundamentals of democracy, formal norms and rules, statutes and laws, in many respects are in suspense, replaced by customary rules, habits and informal practices, tacit "understandings" and deals. J.S. Valenzuela (1992, p. 65) introduced the term "reserved domains," pointing out that they are products of impositions by political actors who have priviledged access to crucial elements of state power. They may result from tacit or explicit understandings the margins of which are often unclear. Delegitimation and ungovernability are to a large degree the property of "reserved domains" and "brown areas". Regarding ECE, this phenomenon concerns most of all law-abidance. Due to party interests, political ambitions, oligarchization of the political class and conversion of political power into economic wealth, the rule of law becomes more and more dubious. Restored by democracy, it is undermined by the spread of unregulated social activities and the emergence of paralegal forms of social control. As Panizza (1995, p. 184) reports with reference to Latin America, there is a considerable rise of "paralegal" forms of social control, signifying in practice a permissible illegality of a certain action because while still illegal, it remains unpunished and is both denied and admitted. Paralegality refers therefore to the fragmentation and loss of state authority and to the erosion of the dividing lines between legality and illegality. In terms of political power and influence, paralegality normally takes form of an alliance between the forces of the state and those of private individuals and organized crime, often in collusion with local traders and politicians. These phenomena shatter the social fabric and constitutional structure, undermining the popular support for democracy and resulting in progressing delegitimation of state authorities. An uncohesive, ambiguous and hybrid legal system is conducive to varied interpretations of the existing constitutional and legal provisions. This was, and still is, a particular case of Poland. The famous "falandization" of law (named by Walesa's chief legal adviser, Prof. Lech Falandysz) was based on the presumption that the prerogatives of the presidency, especially Walesa's presidency, may be defined or clarified not through legal means but rather in a practical way, what can lead to a struggle over interpretation of the law. If the "falandization" had anyway meant obedience to the law, notwithstanding an unrestrained tendency to stretch it, the "jaskiernization" (named by the Minister of Justice in the leftist government of Oleksy, Jerzy Jaskiernia) meant politically biased justice involved in the fulfillment of partisan objectives and interests as well as in the defense of members of the ruling post-communist party who have broken the law. An impending danger for the ECE new democracies is the expansion of "brown areas" as a part of political consolidation. When ruling parties are interested in maintaining legal loopholes because it serves its particular goals, political pathologies turn to normalcy and the transparency of politics, the basic condition for democratic regime, is a mere wishful thinking. Clientelism and corruption As we already concluded, civil society is--at least in democratic theory--the most relevant actor in the political game. Nonetheless, in non-consolidated, or consolidating, regimes, a network of groups and associations organized along clientelistic and neopatrimonial patterns of governance is far more important in terms of micro-analytical approach to the political game. Different from civil society, those associations are founded on patterns, structures and mechanisms transferred from the old regime, adjusted to the new normative/institutional framework and implanted in the social consciousness, structures of interest representation, strategies of political action. ECE societies under communist rule lost their identities, turning into the atomized masses strictly controlled by the party-state "superorganization" (Tarkowski, 1992, p. 141). In face of the state-led distribution model administered by communist bureaucracy, the only possibility to win access to certain resources, which due to the socialist "shortage economy" were in permanent scarcity, was entering into a patron-client relationship. Buying the entrance card to the initially hermetic world of "connections" and "accesses" required bribing public officials or declaring vassalage to a mandatary that could expect potential benefits and personal advantage (Tarkowski, 1981, pp. 176-182). More and more persons played a double role acting both as patron and client, as a victim and a beneficiary of privilege (Clark & Wildavsky, 1990, p. 163). State patronage, personalized patrimonialism, clientelism and vassalage constituted the predominant forms of informal regulation of social and political relationships regarding exchange or flow of resources between social actors. Those forms of informal exchange also underlied a specific "rite of communication" between state institutions and the society, parallel to the official channels of government. Eisenstadt and Roniger (1981, p. 277) stress the fact that the patron-client relations are not fully legal. They are often opposed to the official laws and are based on informal understandings. The origins of dissent as well as popular anti-communist rebellions in ECE countries were led under the banner of putting an end to the corrupt, demoralized regime (9) Zbo_il draws our attention to the fact that the first political proclamations of the Czechoslovak opposition (done by Procházka and Havel), yet before the famous Charter 77 declaration, pointed out a sharp decay of state institutions and a widespread corruption (Zbo_il 1995, p. 31). The trend toward organizing networks of connections that based themselves on loyalty and dependency to the leading political figures was noticeable in post-communist politics as well. Hankiss (1990a, p. 193) claims that in the post-totalitarian period of East European societies, the activation of clientelistic patterns was inevitable as despotic central control was relaxed and bureaucratic power was decentralized without creating institutions of democratic participation and interest representation. The emerging space between a weakened central power and an anomic society was filled with patron-client networks. Far from ideology and ritual power relationships, clientelism introduced new, and often alternative to the official structures, channels of power, influence, intermediation, interest representation. One has to put it clearly that for many political leaders, chiefly from the communist political class, but also those belonging to the opposition, who backed transition from authoritarianism, democratization was a way to keep or win access to power and state patronage. Support for democracy was infected by the patterns of neopatrimonialism and clientelistic mechanisms. Clientelism as the predominant pattern of governance does severe harm to political society which in effect displays various deviations with respect to the pluralist model of society. Parties, trade unions and other political organizations are weak and mostly involved in a political game of donations and privileges. A deep structural weakness of the present system is that the formal legal rules and institutions are seen not as ways of doing things but as obstructions to any action. Willingness to respect and follow the formal rules is declining not only in civil society but also in the government (Malloy & Gamarra, 1987, p. 117). In the ECE countries patronage and clientelism have become the crucial elements of political consolidation as factors reinforcing integration of the social system and ordering the structure of the social stratification. Nationality problems The crumbling of East European communist regimes was the main reason why the issue of nations and nationalism in East-Central Europe has become so acute. The wind of changes, granting political liberties back to the citizens, brought about problems and dilemmas regarding identity and self-identification of various political, social and, the most important, national groups. National minorities, whose ethnic rights were denied under communist rule, expected new post-communist governments to grant them a wide range of autonomy or at least to create favourable conditions for the fulfillment of national aspirations, mostly on the cultural level. Such aspirations were laid by the German minority in Poland, Polish minority in the Czech Republic and, first and foremost, by the Hungarian minority in Slovakia (Brunner, 1992). New governments were afraid that these tendencies toward granting a relatively large scope of autonomy to the minorities would threaten, and even destroy, the structures of the nation-state, regardless of their communist origins and bases as well as totalitarian ways and means of their establishment. Ralf Dahrendorf is right when he points out that the nation-state has been the only ground for a democratic polity, its central political institutions providing the sanctioning of power and the rule of law, the only guarantee for human and political rights (quoted by Bayer, 1995, p. 125). Now in the processes of democracy-building in ECE state institutions and both political and civil societies face the challenge of granting and observing legal and political rights to ethnic, religious and cultural minorities while preserving integrity of the structures and institutions of the new regime. The Hungarian minority in Slovakia now engenders the most serious concerns with respect to nationality dilemmas in East-Central Europe. They reflect a whole range of problems and difficulties in establishing and enforcing rules of coexistence and mutual understanding. The nub of the matter is a dramatic difference in interpreting the legal rights of ethnic groups as well as their real position between the Hungarians and the majority of national Slovak political actors. Slovakia's government claims that rights of national minorities have constitutional guarantees (Articles 33 and 34) and declares that the position of the Hungarians is adequate to the European standards, if not overfulfills the standards evidenced in such countries as France or Great Britain. On the other hand, according to the Hungarian minority leaders, the situation of the Hungarian community hardly complies with the minimum of rights granted to national minorities, yet comparing with the position of the Swedes in Finland or Austrians in the South Tyrol it remains below that level (Procházka 1992a, pp. 41-42; 1992b, pp. 23-24). Both sides in pursuing their policies began to differ increasingly regarding the legal and real position of minorities as well as the set of rules designed to regulate and clarify all the matters at issue. Sharon Fisher describes this situation in the following words: "Slovakia's ethnic Hungarian politicians have been very vocal in their demands for increased rights for minorities. At the same time, however, they have alienated themselves from their Slovak counterparts and stirred up distrust among Slovak citizens" (Fisher, 1995, p. 58). The language law provides a good example for this dilemma. As early as in October 1990 the new law, first in the post-communist era, aroused huge controversies. Slovak nationalist parties and cultural institutions claimed the law went too far in granting minority rights while the proposals of the major parties representing the Hungarian community, particularly referring to bilingual names as well as village and town signs, were immediately discarded (Obrman, 1990). The language issue was transferred to the international forum in 1993 when Hungary, with the purpose of protecting the Hungarians living abroad, threatened to veto Slovakia's membership in the Council of Europe unless Slovak authorities made changes in the country's legislation regarding the position and legal status of national minorities. The complaints from both sides about the language law were omnipresent in 1995 when a new bill was approved after months of discussions, negotiations, mutual accusations and threats (Fisher, 1995, pp. 62-63). The internationalization of the Hungarian-Slovak conflict and the increasing demands of greater autonomy for the Hungarian minority heightened tensions to a maximum level in January 1994. The leaders of the Hungarian community in Slovakia gathered in Komarno called for territorial autonomy and the establishment of self-government based on the ethnic principle. The leaders were charged by the Slovak authorities of disloyalty with respect to the new Slovak state (V.A., 1995, p. 7). The Slovak national elite argued Slovakia was still undergoing a complex and difficult period of economic transformation and political transition, striving at the same time to forge a national identity. The problem of definition and establishment of rules of the game regarding ethnic minorities challenges the essence of democratic consolidation. If participants of the game adhere to different sets of rules and principles, sometimes or often contradictory and conflicting, the functioning of structures and institutions of interest representation, authority and political participation may be subject to deviations and political pathologies that in effect may harm critically the position of the weaker, i.e. the given national minority. The state must bear full responsibility for securing constitutional and legal guarantees for minority rights and not intending to limit or restrain those rights. On the other hand, one must admit that the attitude and political behaviour of the minorities sometimes hinders the carrying out of government policies and is a source of tensions, quarrels and feuds. Radicalization of the sides of conflict often excludes the possibility to work out in a consensual way new rules of the game, respectful of state interests and minority rights and demands. The burden of responsibility in terms of democratic game should be carried by the parliamentary majority, as the principal law-making body, as well as the institutions of the executive, in charge of enforcing and executing the law. If these actors are not eager to restrict their constitutional and real prerogatives in the name of respect for minority rights, aspirations and needs or if they do not adhere to democratic values and norms regarding the minority's status, the emergence of the stable consolidated democratic regime will be a mere utopia. The recomposition of the dominant power bloc. The dominant feature of the processes of political change in both regions is a high grade of continuity in the structures of power in the aspect of authority, interest and influence. The strategy of democratization masterminded by the communists secured their dominant position in the political system, safeguarded vital interests and, at the same time, helped to neutralize or eliminate sources of the most resolute critique and opposition. Moreover, it offered political actors equal opportunities of an unrestricted competition. In exchange, the communist political class kept free hand to transfer agencies of power and influence from authoritarian politics into a democratic setting accompanied by the institutionalization of the old structures of power, redefine strategic interests of the dominant power bloc, accomodate themselves to the new normative and institutional framework, and strengthen its role and position in a new political system (Hankiss, 1991). The recomposition consisted in the relocation of vital interests from political arena to the economy. The former political class was converted into a new economic class, taking advantage of economic reform programmes carried into effect by the new democratic governments. The former communist power bloc pursued successfully the strategy of recomposition and adaptation. It managed to retain under direct control or influence various, in many cases large, areas of state power and affect, sometimes critically, the restructuration and transformation of the political and socio-economic fields (T_kés, 1991, pp. 260-261; Szelenyi {et al.}, 1995; Kiss, 1995). Post-communist parties essentially found democratic politics benign from the point of view of their vital interests already adjusted to the new normative and institutional setting. Structures of interest and political influence established or transplanted by ex-communists became an important element of the emerging democratic/capitalist order. A prominent Polish expert on constitutionalism, Wiktor Osiaty_ski, dared to claim that by 1993 in Poland the post-communist parties were better prepared for democratic electoral competition than the post-Solidarity parties which had prepared the transition to democracy (Osiaty_ski, 1994a, p. 40). The contribution of the former communist political class to the building of the new system is undeniable. Yet this apparently positive role goes accompanied by numerous clouds of suspicion, as observed by domestic and international publics. First of all, ex-communists are still guided by the principle of class interest. Hence, they promote or support those normative and institutional arrangements which seem profitable from the point of view of their interests and goals. The category of "public good" is rather absent in their political philosophy and praxis. Good examples are offered by the cases of ownership transformation and governing coalition agreements in Poland and Slovakia. In Poland, a commercialization program launched by the Oleksy government was praised by the ruling coalition as a push forward in the snail-like process of mass privatization. Critics, however, pointed out that such a program offered gorgeous financial profits and professional opportunities for people belonging in one of the ruling coalition parties. In Slovakia the privatization law was frequently undergoing important changes. The voucher privatization was stopped by the third Me_iar government and selling companies as a chief privatization procedure became a speculation-like way for Me_iar's HZDS party officials and their allies to take possession of huge fortunes. Ownership changes in Slovnaft, VSZ, Matador Puhov or Novaky companies evidence the involvement of high-ranking officials of the ruling coalition in speculative transactions (Rzeczpospolita, 25.09.1995). Poland's SLD-PSL coalition agreement on cadre policy resembled old nomenklatura practices. Ex-communist party bosses linked to government officials play a critical part in the distribution of state concessions and licenses regarding investment, trade, banking and ownership changes. An interesting illustration of such a phenomenon is the struggle of the PSL party in Poland for the state-licensed investment projects concerning a gas pipeline Russia - West Europe (Zyba_a, 1995, p. 51). The process of recomposition of the dominant power bloc allowed the communist political class to safeguard political influence and secure their strategic interests. Osiaty_ski once claimed that the communism-rooted new capitalists want to have their own people in power to help them fight competition (Osiaty_ski, 1994a, p. 41). In this context, continuity with respect to some structures of power and influence undermines the long-term objectives of the systemic transformation and is a serious obstacle to the consolidation of democratic regime. Reckoning with the past One of the central dilemmas during the process of democratic consolidation is how to balance demands for justice and retribution with the need to safeguard the democratic transformation itself. The decommunization issue concerns the fundamentals of post-communist politics. Dealing with the past, in terms of symbolic politics cultivated by new democratic elites, meant the necessity of squaring accounts. It perfectly fit to the Manichean description of reality, so deeply rooted in the social consciousness under communist rule. One must keep in mind that justice, along with freedom, were the leading values referred to during the "Autumn of the People". Levels of frustration and aggression engendered by the economic collapse, political instability and the "shock of freedom" incited the masses gripped by revolutionary messianism to want retribution, to bring the pipers of the old regime to court (Konrad, 1992, p. 41). It turned out that for some parties and politicians, like Democratic Union in Poland or Free Democrats in Hungary, it was too hard to pass final sentences. They did not want to bear responsibility for the fate of thousands of people entangled in the communist party-state structures. In spite of reliving the past, they preferred escaping it (Karpi_ski, 1995a). This underlied the philosophy of "thick line" adopted by the Mazowiecki government in Poland and its successors as well as the Constitutional Court of Hungary declaring the so-called Zetenyi-Takacs law unconstitutional (Solyom, 1992; Holmes, 1994). Meanwhile in Czechoslovakia, despite protests from the part of some moderate circles of the former anti-communist opposition, the Screening Act (lustrace) was passed on October 1991 and next, in 1995, prolonged, giving decommunization a concrete, although pretty extreme, expression (Kavan, 1992; Janyska, 1992). Admitting the moral right to retroactive justice, the oppponents of screening pointed out that any form of lustration may augment uncertainty in the state administration, industry management and may consolidate "old" sectors of the society, destabilizing hence the political and economic situation (Kuczy_ski, 1991) (10). The issue of decommunization reflects most seriously the dilemma of defining and introducing new rules of post-communist politics. This implies at the same time the question about the form of governance, structures of authority and political regime. The first problem are the moral and philosophical bases of politics. Liberal-democratic regimes designed by first post-communist governments were founded on the rule-of-law principle. In spite of the fact that this rule was a part of the recomposition strategy pursued by the former communist power bloc, it was intended to become an organizing principle due to which foundations of a new stable democratic order should be established. Rule of law and the state of law (Rechtstaat) reflected the old European legal positivism, trusting in the prudence of "the law is the law" (Varga, 1993, p. 316). An optimistic trait of the constitutional order in East-Central Europe is that the rule of law seems to be taking hold (Brown 1995, p. 6). Liberal principles limit considerably the room for manoeuvre with reference to unusual cases which require a special juridical interpretation and a careful legal treatment. This means that coping with communist legacy and calling for retroactive justice can be exclusively dealt with via democratic procedures and judicial proceedings. This has obviously certain repercussions. Convicting communist apparatchiks of a crime requires a lengthy, timely and arduous case. Two exemplary cases in Poland, concerning Stalinist judges responsible for unhuman treatment of detainees as well as militia functionaries who killed a teenage Solidarity manifestant in 1983, have shown all the range of problems, difficulties and traps awaiting those who want to fight for justice a dozen or dozens years after. A pessimistic trait is that reckoning with the past is in no way settled. Perhaps the Czech Republic is closer to a final solution to this problem due to the lustration, despite the fact that it demonstrated all the weaknesses and shortcomings of such a type of juridical regulation (Holmes, 1994, p. 33; Jagodzinski, 1993, p. 9). Nevertheless, Poland, Hungary, and to a lesser extent Slovakia, still face potential perils coming from the continuing need for justice and redress. In the course of time, however, the public apetite for purges has diminished thanks to two phenomena. First, the memory of historical past resulted surprisingly short and the bitter experiences of the life under communism sank into oblivion. Most of those social groups that had demanded retribution and decommunization canalized their anger and dissatisfaction towards certain institutions and rules of the emerging capitalist order. The International Monetary Fund, neoliberalism, privatization are the demons frequently exorcized by populist masses. Now, ironically enough, capitalists are more disliked than former communists. However, a considerable part of the former are the latter and the attacks on ex-communists may continue under the banner of materialistic egalitarianism and a more equal distribution of wealth. Second, post-communist parties now governing in Poland and Hungary, nipped any attempts to come to terms with the injustices of the communist era in the bud. In Hungary, the Horn government abolished a fact-finding committee which was in the process of compiling a report about political crimes committed under communism. Horn condemned the screening law, which had been found by the Constitutional Court in harmony with the constitution, as unconstitutional and impossible to implement (Oltay, 1995, p. 34). In Poland, the attempts to put former communist bosses on trial for bloodshed accompanying the political crises of 1970 and 1981-82 revealed all the range of legal controversies in dealing with such complex political charges. Nowadays, dealing with the past is almost purely a symbolic issue. The processes of recomposition and conversion of the former communist political class, the embedment of members of the old regime in the new structures of politics and economy, make the initiatives and projects of retroactive justice instruments of socio-technique and political mobilization employed by rightist parties aiming to win social capital for party interests and goals.