Why do political actors pass legislation that seemingly hurts them? Lustration laws limit access to public offi ce of the ancien regime's collaborators and hurt members of post-communist parties in East-Central Europe. So why has lustration in Poland, Hungary, and Bulgaria been passed when post-communist parties held parliamentary majorities? Why did the postcommunist party in Romania switch from no-lustration to pro-lustration after the 1992 elections? We explain this phenomenon by electoral timing and rules of rocedure in legislatures. Specifi cally, we develop an agenda-setter model with a finite number of parties, imperfect information, and multiple potential medians. Our main argument can be summarized as follows: Suppose that the Postcommunists do not introduce any lustration bill and then lose proposal power in elections. If Anti-communists come to power, they are sure to introduce a harsher bill, and the median of the legislature may prefer such a bill to a no-bill status quo. Post-communists can prevent such a scenario by implementing a mild bill themselves. If they manage to appease the new parliamentary median, they will block a harsher bill that would be implemented after they lose power. Additional results show how electoral perspectives and uncertainty affect and modify this typical scenario. We test our model with an exhaustive analysis of all cases from East- Central Europe that meet our assumptions that a Postcommunist party is in power and no lustration bill is already in force.

Scholars have argued that Eastern Europe’s communist past drives signifi cant differences in Eastern and Western Europeans’ social justice norms. However, much of this research examined attitudes before the East’s accession to the European Union (EU). Using data from the International Social Survey Project’s 1999 and 2009 Social Inequality surveys, I compare Eastern and Western Europeans’ attitudes toward income redistribution to examine whether EU integration has coincided with a convergence in Eastern and Western social justice norms. I fi nd that although average levels of support for redistribution have remained stable overtime in the East, there have been important changes in ways that Eastern Europeans form opinions about redistribution. First, class status has become more important in shaping Eastern attitudes since the East’s EU accession. By 2009, its effect in the East was not signifi cantly different from its effect in the West. Second, while citizens’ experience under communism signifi cantly affected Eastern attitudes before EU accession, its effect has become insignifi cant overtime. These fi ndings suggest that the East’s communist past is no longer an important driver of variations in social justice norms across the EU.

: In the second half of 2014 Poland is expected to conduct the reservation procedure of radio spectrum for commercial high-speed Internet services (LTE). Given the enormous market value of resources, for the first time in the history of the Polish elecommunications market, the allocation of frequency blocks will be determined through a multi-object MRA auction carried out by the Offi ce of Electronic Communications (UKE). Drawing on the theoretical properties of the auction format chosen by the Polish regulator, we have developed a dedicated simulator to analyze auction runs for fi ve 800 MHz blocks. We consider possible developments of LTE auction and expected revenues it brings for four most likely confi gurations of bidders.