Affiliate & Associate

Research

Purging the Police in Nascent Democracies

Abstract: How do new democracies reckon with inherited authoritarian enforcement agencies? Obviously, they can disband authoritarian agencies and build new ones (thorough purge) or make former agents work for the new regime (no purge). A third way is to purge selectively: evaluate each agent, case by case. We argue, that even accounting for self-selection, such selective purges are most likely when agents are moderate in competence and ideology. When the pool of agents is less competent or more loyal to the ancien regime, selective purges give way to thorough purges; when competence and loyalty are high, “no purges” are preferred. This theory is supported with data on the operation of verification commissions in 49 sub-national regions of Poland. Building on the Most Similar Systems Design method we develop a systematic approach to case selection in instances when the number of cases is too small for OLS, yet too large to avoid cherry-picking to fit theoretical predictions.

Working Paper

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