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.

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.

State failure is a central challenge to international peace and security in the post-Cold War era. Yet theorizing on the causes of state failure remains surprisingly limited. In State Erosion, Lawrence P. Markowitz draws on his extensive fieldwork in two Central Asian republics—Tajikistan, where state institutions fragmented into a five-year civil war from 1992 through 1997, and Uzbekistan, which constructed one of the largest state security apparatuses in post-Soviet Eurasia—to advance a theory of state failure focused on unlootable resources, rent seeking, and unruly elites. In Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and other countries with low capital mobility—where resources cannot be extracted, concealed, or transported to market without state intervention—local elites may control resources, but they depend on patrons to convert their resources into rents. Markowitz argues that different rent-seeking opportunities either promote the cooptation of local elites to the regime or incite competition over rents, which in turn lead to either cohesion or fragmentation. Markowitz distinguishes between weak states and failed states, challenges the assumption that state failure in a country begins at the center and radiates outward, and expands the “resource curse” argument to include cash crop economies, where mechanisms of state failure differ from those involved in fossil fuels and minerals. Broadening his argument to weak states in the Middle East (Syria and Lebanon) and Africa (Zimbabwe and Somalia), Markowitz shows how the distinct patterns of state failure in weak states with immobile capital can inform our understanding of regime change, ethnic violence, and security sector reform.

An examination of the post-communism reform of state enterprises that reveals the political dynamics of privatization

The great dilemma of democracy revolves around the state. Historically, the state has played a crucial role as enforcer of liberal democratic constitutions, but it has also been used by autocratic rulers to entrench their rule. The state is thus a two-edged sword: It can both be the guarantee of democratic rights and a tool that can be used to suppress such rights. One corollary of this is that the influence of state structures on democratic development depends on who holds government power. But the opposite observation can also be made, as governments play an important role in shaping the state apparatus. The state and the regime are thus intertwined. Against this backdrop, this book presents a series of attempts – authored by influential experts such as Francis Fukuyama and Gerardo Munck – to disentangle the relationship between the state and political regimes. The contributions differ in terms of their particular theoretical and empirical focus. But they share the assumption that three criteria need to be observed to achieve a better understanding of the state-democracy nexus. First, it is valuable to distinguish conceptually between different aspects of the state. Second, the potential relationships between democracy and these attributes of state should be carefully theorized. Third, the consequent propositions must be interrogated using comparative approaches. This book was originally published as a special issue of Democratization.

An original study of the internationally inspired effort to rebuild this war-torn African country. It seeks to understand the role of the international community in constructing a new kind of African state in the aftermath of conflict and socialism. At the heart of the book is the question of sustainability of the post-conflict African state against the backdrop of the multiple legacies of war, socialism, and regional and international intervention upon an enervated Mozambican society.