This paper studies a new mechanism that allows political elites from a non-democratic regime to survive a democratic transition: connections. We document this mechanism in the transition from the Vichy regime back to democracy in post-World War II France. The politicians who had supported the Vichy regime were purged in a two-stage process whereby local courts, Comites departementaux de liberation (CDLs) and a national court, the Jury d'Honneur, sequentially decided whether to uphold the ban on participation in politics for each defendant. First, we show that the Jury was more likely than the CDLs to clear defendants who were Law graduates, a powerful group in French politics at the time. The difference in clearance rates between Law graduates and other defendants was 10 percentage points higher in front of the Jury than in front of the CDLs. This Law graduate advantage was consequential and created elite persistence, as it mainly appeared when defendants intended on continuing their political careers.
Second, a systematic analysis of the still-classified 17,589 documents contained in the Jury dossiers of the defendants is consistent with the hypothesis that the connections of Law graduates to the Jury was a major driver of their ability to avoid the purge. We consider and rule out alternative mechanisms.