ABSTRACT
At the beginning of the 1990s, the first post-communist governments in Central and Eastern Europe initiated far-reaching reforms to dismantle the communist legal order and to accelerate the transition to democracy and a market economy. New constitutions had been adopted to restore democratic rights, norms and principles such as the separation of powers and the independence of the judiciary. The collapse of communism was celebrated in the region and the international support for democracy was expected to solve global problems such as economic stagnation, poverty and political instability (Piana 2010: 2). To this end, various international organizations offered policy prescriptions to support this process of change and put forward the rule of law as a precondition to attract investment and to ensure citizens’ rights and equality before the law. In doing so, judicial reforms weighed heavily on the transition process as both democracy and economic development imply that judges are impartial and independent of political influence and committed to upholding the law. Thus, drawing from previous democratic transitions in Latin America and Southern Europe, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund as well as the Council of Europe and the Organization for Economic Development and Cooperation came up with global prescriptions for fast and smooth transitions from communism to capitalism, devoting particular attention to the independence, efficiency and accountability of the judiciary.
