Rebuilding Leviathan
Rebuilding Leviathan
Why do some governing parties limit their opportunistic behaviour and constrain the extraction of private gains from the state? This analysis of post-communist state reconstruction provides surprising answers to this fundamental question of party politics. Across the post-communist democracies, governing parties have opportunistically reconstructed the state - simultaneously exploiting it by extracting state resources and building new institutions that further such extraction. They enfeebled or delayed formal state institutions of monitoring and oversight, established new discretionary structures of state administration, and extracted enormous informal profits from the privatization of the communist economy. By examining how post-communist political parties rebuilt the state in Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia, Grzymala-Busse explains how even opportunistic political parties will limit their corrupt behaviour and abuse of state resources when faced with strong political competition.
- First book on post-communist state building
- Comparison of multiple democracies, including the neglected Baltic Republics
- New indicator of political competition that focuses on party behaviour
Product details
April 2007Hardback
9780521873963
296 pages
236 × 158 × 21 mm
0.52kg
25 tables
Available
Table of Contents
- 1. Introduction
- 2. Competing for the state
- 3. Developing the formal institutions of the state
- 4. The expansion of state administration: exploitation or patronage?
- 5. Privatizing the state: party financing strategies.
