Trust in Government and Government Effectiveness

This chapter examines whether, when, and how lustration and truth commissions affected trust in government and government effectiveness. Lustration had a direct positive relationship with government effectiveness; more extensive lustration programs appeared to have a bigger positive impact on government effectiveness than more informal programs. However, with respect to trust in government, the lustration effects were largely indirect and temporally contingent. Only early lustration was clearly associated with trust in government. Later in the transition, reforms registered weaker effects on trust in government, if any. To illustrate further the dynamics associated with the timing of reforms, the chapter explores the case of Poland’s late reform programs, highlighting some of the potential problems with domestic politicization of late reform efforts. Poland’s programs illustrate that while the timing of reforms matters, effective implementation of lustration can happen early or late in the transition process.