LUSTRACIJA KAO MEHANIZAM DEMOKRATSKE SAMOODBRANE I TRANZICIONE PRAVDE: ZAKON O ODGOVORNOSTI ZA KRŠENJE LJUDSKIH PRAVA
LUSTRATION AS A MECHANISM OF DEMOCRATIC SELF-DEFENSE AND TRANSITIONAL JUSTICE: RESPONSIBILITY FOR HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS LAW

Summary/Abstract: Serbia’s democratic transition from the beginning of the 2000s was characterized by the gradual consolidation of democratic institutions, but in recent decades, a trend of democratic regression has been noticeable, manifested through autocratization and contestation of electoral processes. This kind of regression has led to an increasingly frequent classification of Serbia in the “grey zone” of democratization. At the same time, the global context is marked by the strengthening of authoritarian and hybrid regimes, growing economic inequality, and the rise of rightwing populism, which contributed to the revitalization of the concept of democratic selfdefense. A special place in this literature is occupied by models of militant and nonmilitant democracy, which offer different norms and mechanisms to protect the democratic order from antidemocratic actors. In this paper, we analyze the Law on Responsibility for Violation of Human Rights as the first post transition law on lustration in Serbia, placing it in the theoretical framework of various models of democratic selfdefense and transitional justice, and comparing it with practices and models of lustration in other post communist societies. Through a qualitative analysis of the legal text, the parliamentary debate on its adoption and the public performances of relevant actors, the paper tries to position the Serbian model of lustration within one of the models of democratic selfdefense, to determine the elements of other models that are potentially present, as well as to categorize this example of lustration into one of the applied models of lustration in other post communist societies.

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