Trust and Transitional Justice

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cynthia M. Horne
Keyword(s):  
Literature Review ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Interpersonal Trust ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
Public Institutions ◽  
Public Disclosure ◽  
Trust In Government ◽  
Change Characteristic ◽  
Communist Countries

Chapter 1 provides a literature review upon which to build the theoretical scaffolding of this book and explicates the development of the lustration typology. The chapter reviews the trust literature, highlighting differences in the origins and effects of trust in public institutions, trust in government, interpersonal trust, and trust in social institutions. Chapter 1 also reviews the literature on lustration and transitional justice, highlighting the design and use of measures in the post-communist region. From this literature, Chapter 1 develops a transitional justice typology consisting of four different categories of lustration and public disclosure programs based on the scope and implementation of programs and the degree of bureaucratic and symbolic change characteristic of the different programs. This typology is then used to categorize post-communist countries in Chapter 2.

Classifying Countries within the Transitional Justice Typology

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cynthia M. Horne
Keyword(s):  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Truth Commissions ◽  
Public Disclosure ◽  
Employment Change ◽  
The Czech Republic ◽  
File Access ◽  
Independent Variable ◽  
Public Disclosures

Chapter 2 explores each of the country cases in this project, namely the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Russia, Ukraine, and Albania. The chapter provides historical details of the transitional justice reforms in all twelve countries from 1989–2013, covering lustration, file access, public disclosures, and truth commissions. This material is then used to place each country case within the typology developed in Chapter 1, according to whether the measures were expansive and included compulsory employment change, limited and included largely voluntary employment change, informal and largely symbolic, or actively rejected. The chapter provides variable conceptualization and operationalization specifics to be used in the subsequent statistical analyses, including three different lustration variables, a truth commission variable, and timing of reform variables. It provides qualitative, comparative historical details to justify the classification of countries according to the primary independent variable, namely lustration and public disclosure programs.

Building Trust in Public Institutions

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cynthia M. Horne
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Political Trust ◽  
Public Institutions ◽  
Truth Commissions ◽  
Trust Building ◽  
Public Disclosure ◽  
Building Trust ◽  
Building Effects

This chapter examines the conditions under which lustration and truth commissions affected trust in targeted public institutions, such as the judiciary, the parliament, the police, and political parties, or composites of institutions, such as oversight institutions or elected institutions. I find strong and consistent relationships between lustration and political trust, except for the most highly politicized public institutions. More extensive and compulsory programs were associated with the largest trust-building effects. Truth commissions were not associated with political trust-building. This chapter also demonstrates that delayed reforms were more effective than reforms initiated right after the transition for most of the institutions, except for highly politicized institutions. This runs contrary to assumptions about the necessity of starting reforms immediately after the transition or not at all. The chapter presents the paired cases of Bulgaria and Romania and illustrates the possibilities for public disclosure programs to effect lustration-like reforms.

scholarly journals The concept of neutrality: a new approach

2019 ◽  
Vol 76 (1) ◽  
pp. 333-353 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Macdonald ◽  
Briony Birdi
Keyword(s):  
Literature Review ◽  
Design Methodology ◽  
Information Science ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Library And Information Science ◽  
New Approach ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Normative Framework ◽  
Contextual Awareness

Purpose Neutrality is a much debated value in library and information science (LIS). The “neutrality debate” is characterised by opinionated discussions in contrasting contexts. The purpose of this paper is to fill a gap in the literature by bringing these conceptions together holistically, with potential to deepen understanding of LIS neutrality. Design/methodology/approach First, a literature review identified conceptions of neutrality reported in the LIS literature. Second, seven phenomenographic interviews with LIS professionals were conducted across three professional sectors. To maximise variation, each sector comprised at least one interview with a professional of five or fewer years’ experience and one with ten or more years’ experience. Third, conceptions from the literature and interviews were compared for similarities and disparities. Findings In four conceptions, each were found in the literature and interviews. In the literature, these were labelled: “favourable”, “tacit value”, “social institutions” and “value-laden profession”, whilst in interviews they were labelled: “core value”, “subservient”, “ambivalent”, and “hidden values”. The study’s main finding notes the “ambivalent” conception in interviews is not captured by a largely polarised literature, which oversimplifies neutrality’s complexity. To accommodate this complexity, it is suggested that future research should look to reconcile perceptions from either side of the “neutral non-neutral divide” through an inclusive normative framework. Originality/value This study’s value lies in its descriptive methodology, which brings LIS neutrality together in a holistic framework. This framework brings a contextual awareness to LIS neutrality lacking in previous research. This awareness has the potential to change the tone of the LIS neutrality debate.

Captured Commitments: An Analytic Narrative of Transitions with Transitional Justice

2010 ◽  
Vol 62 (2) ◽  
pp. 341-380 ◽  
Author(s):  
Monika Nalepa
Keyword(s):  
Incomplete Information ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Narrative Approach ◽  
Analytic Narrative ◽  
Step Down ◽  
Communist Countries ◽  
Commitment Problems ◽  
Opposition Parties

How can outgoing autocrats enforce promises of amnesty once they have left power? Why would incoming opposition parties honor their prior promises of amnesty once they have assumed power and face no independent mechanisms of enforcement? In 1989 autocrats in a number of communist countries offered their respective oppositions free elections in exchange for promises of amnesty. The communists' decision appears irrational given the lack of institutions to enforce these promises of amnesty. What is further puzzling is that the former opposition parties that won elections in many countries actually refrained from implementing transitional justice measures. Their decision to honor their prior agreements to grant amnesty seems as irrational as the autocrats' decisions to place themselves at the mercy of their opponents. Using an analytic narrative approach, the author explains this paradox by modeling pacted transitions not as simple commitment problems but as games of incomplete information where the uninformed party has “skeletons in its closet”—that is, embarrassing information that provides insurance against the commitments being broken. The author identifies the conditions under which autocrats step down even though they can be punished with transitional justice and illustrates the results with case studies from Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Hungary.

Perspectives on Information Infrastructures

2012 ◽  
pp. 19-39
Keyword(s):  
Information Systems ◽  
Literature Review ◽  
Theoretical Approach ◽  
Organizational Transformation ◽  
Information Infrastructure ◽  
Information Infrastructures ◽  
Other Information ◽  
Concept Of Information ◽  
Critical Literature

This chapter builds on the discussion in Chapter 1 by tracing the evolution of the concept of infrastructure into the concept of information infrastructure. The key objective is to describe in detail how different researchers have approached the notion from varied perspectives in their efforts to understand information infrastructure and its role in organizational transformation and practice. The objective is to clarify the distinct aspects of information infrastructures in relation to other information systems, whilst also to identify opportunities for constructing contributions in the existing literature. This chapter concludes with a summary of some key observations emerging from this critical literature review and identifies some implications for the theoretical approach adopted in the rest of this book.

The Effects of Local Economic Conditions on Confidence in Key Institutions and Interpersonal Trust after the Great Recession

2013 ◽  
Vol 650 (1) ◽  
pp. 274-298 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lindsay A. Owens ◽  
Karen S. Cook
Keyword(s):  
Great Recession ◽  
Political Attitudes ◽  
Interpersonal Trust ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
Organized Labor ◽  
Economic Conditions ◽  
County Level ◽  
The Great Recession ◽  
Data Source ◽  
Aggregate Effects

The effects of recessions on social and political attitudes are likely smaller than the effects on employment, income, and wealth, but relatively modest aggregate effects may be masking differences in attitudes between individuals who live in areas most and least affected by recessions. To investigate social and political attitudes in geographical context, we exploit a new data source that matches individuals to their county of residence to analyze whether changing economic conditions at the county level are associated with changing confidence in major social institutions and with changing levels of interpersonal trust. We find that individuals in particularly affected counties are more likely to decrease their support for organized labor and the federal government. County-level hardship does not appear to be associated with changes in interpersonal measures of trust, however, suggesting that two very different processes may be at play.

Trust in public institutions in Russia: The lowest in the world

2006 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 153-174 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vladimir Shlapentokh
Keyword(s):  
Political Institutions ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
Public Institutions ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
The World

The article’s topic is the attitudes of the Russians toward their social institutions. As it will be shown, Russia is a country, much more than any other, that mistrusts its social institutions, political institutions in particular. There is no one institution that can garner more than 40 to 50 percent of the nation’s trust. Indeed, in terms of their lack of confidence in social institutions, the Russians are behind not only the most advanced countries in the world, but even countries known for their unstable political systems, such as Colombia or Nigeria.

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