Applied Economics Lunch Seminar

Du 19/05/2020 de 12:00 à 13:00

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LACROIX Jean (Université Paris-Saclay)

Democratic purges in 1945 France: Was it all about separating the wheat from the chaff?

To facilitate their consolidation, new democracies often purge supporters of former regimes. We refer to such purges as democratic purges. As opposed to purges in autocracies, democratic purges must strike a balance between annihilating the threats from the associates of the former regime and following the rule of law. How do new democracies strike this balance? In 1945, France set up an extraordinary Court aimed at legally purging the members of the Vichy regime: the Jury d’Honneur. In this paper, we investigate the bias of the Jury d’Honneur to clear politicians. To distinguish statistical discrimination from taste-based discrimination, we see if the cases in which the Jury d’Honneur overruled the opinions of local courts exhibit the same characteristics. As we observe that the Jury d’Honneur biased its decision towards different groups, we focus on the in-group bias it had towards law graduates, a historically powerful group in French politics. The Jury overruled the decision of local courts to purge law graduates in 26.47 percent of the cases whereas it did so in 13.49 percent of the cases for other defendants. In front of the Jury, the clearance rate of law graduates was 8 percentage points higher than other politicians’ whereas it was 2 percentage points lower in front of local courts. A network analysis of documents contained in individual files moreover points to the connections of law graduates as a factor explaining the bias of the Jury d’Honneur. This bias was not unconsequential as it appeared mainly in electoral litigations cases.