Like other vetting policies, it was designed to enhance citizen trust in the new regime and the
regime’s trust in its citizens, thereby promoting good governance and democratic consolidation.
Whatever form vetting develops within a national and historical context, across the cases there is
a common understanding that vetting is used to remove individuals from holding certain offices
and positions in public institutions based on their actions in the previous regime.
“The dominant view in the academic literature is that transitional justice is
counterproductive because it interferes with the development of democratic institutions and
market economies.”
Offe provides more than twenty compelling and highly thought provoking
reasons why vetting, lustration, and other forms of transitional justice undermine trust in public
institutions and goals of good governance.
There are many possible trust debilitating elements in
the moral reasoning, process, and implementation of vetting practices.
Contrary to much of the academic literature, this paper will argue that vetting practices
improve governance by increasing both institutional competencies, as well as perceptions about
institutional incentives and competencies. It is the actual change in the personnel and the
composition of the institutions combined with the changes in attitudes and perceptions
engendered by the vetting practices that create the conditions for trust building and the
framework for trustworthy institutions. I also argue that there are important indirect effects from
the vetting process on interpersonal trust. As such, one must consider how interpersonal trust or
generalized societal trust affects actual regime trustworthiness and perceptions of the
trustworthiness of its public institutions.
Before analyzing the building of trustworthy public institutions in transitional societies,
one must also address questions of distrust. Distrust of public institutions as well as general
1
Eric Posner and Adrian Vermeule, "Transitional Justice as Ordinary Justice." Harvard Law Review 117, 761
(2004), p. 825.
2
Claus Offe "Coming to Terms with Past Injustices: An Introduction to Legal Strategies Available in Post-
communist Societies." Archives Européennes de Sociologie 33, 1 (1992): 195-201; and Varieties of Transition: The
East European and East German Experience. (London: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
3
Convention