Runaway State-Building: Patronage Politics and Democratic Development by Conor O'Dwyer (review)

Abstract

764 SEER, 86, 4, OCTOBER 2008 This book is a worthy testament toArchie Brown's seminal work. It also helps to advance the global debate set out by Samuel P. Huntington and Lawrence E. Harrison, in theirvolume Culture Matters: How Values ShapeHuman Progress (New York, 2001). These discussions enable a reader to identify the distinctiveness of the Soviet political experience and create a frame of reference for a specialist interested in the analysis of the implications of the political culture and its transformations in post-Communist regimes. UCL SSEES Alena Ledeneva O'Dwyer, Conor. Runaway State-Building: PatronagePolitics andDemocraticDevelop ment. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, MD, 2006. xv + 278 pp. Tables. Figures. Appendices. Notes. Bibliography. Index. ?33.50. Unlike many contributions to the comparative transition and consolidation literature, the focus of thisbook ison the state.The (often implicit) assumption in democratization studies tends to be that an effective state bureaucracy contributes to the successful consolidation of democracy, but itappears that many post-transition countries which have successfully consolidated on the procedural and attitudinal dimensions continue to be troubled by persistent practices of patronage and party rent-seeking within the state. Nevertheless, the subject of state-building in newly emerging democracies has received relatively little systematic scholarly attention. Runaway State-Building ? a comparative analysis of the patterns of state-building and patronage politics in the post-Communist democracies of Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic ? is therefore a welcome contribution to the literature. The fundamental question that concerns Conor O'Dwyer iswhy patterns of 'runaway state-building' are visible in some countries but not in others, with 'runaway state-building' defined as a 'rapid expansion in the size of the state administration without appreciable gains in its effectiveness' (p. 1).O'Dwyer follows Shefter in arguing that the sequence of state- and party-building is of critical importance: strong pressures for patronage politics will emerge if democratization occurs after the consolidation of the state administration. However powerful, this argument fails to explain the variation in the patterns of state-building and patronage politics between countries which share similar democratization sequences. The originality and importance of Runaway State-Buildinglies in the significance given to party competition as an intermediary variable to account for these divergences. The key assertion is that robust and institutionalized electoral competition can act as a powerful constraint on patronage-led state building. Runaway State-Buildingrelies heavily on a 'responsible-party system' logic: institutional ized party systems, preferably bipolar, produce coherent governments and credible oppositions and thereby generate vertical accountability. They pro vide the electorate with a meaningful opportunity tomonitor party behaviour and with the possibility 'to vote the rascals out'. Furthermore, party system institutionalization implies thedevelopment of programmatic parties thatkeep each other in check. Political eliteswill thus refrain from patronage-led state REVIEWS 765 building in anticipation of being dislodged from officeby disapproving voters. This prospective aspect of the accountability argument appears problematic. Even if the Czech Republic ultimately developed into a bipolar 'responsible party system', for example, in the early 1990s itmet only few of the criteria for institutionalization. From a synchronic perspective, therefore,with the Social Democrats not consolidating themselves as a credible opposition party until the 1996 elections, it is difficult to see how the dynamics of party com petition would have deterred theKlaus administration from a patronage-led expansion of the state or a particularistic reform of the welfare state. O'Dwyer analyses the growth of the state in the three post-Communist countries from 1990 to 2000. Conforming to his expectations, in the 'respon sible party system' of theCzech Republic he findsa relatively low level of state expansion that does not vary under different governments. In 'dominant party systems' such as Slovakia, on the other hand, the state expands rapidly if the political machine is in government and stagnates if it isnot. In Poland (a 'weak-governance system'), where governments are heterogeneous and the opposition is divided, state expansion is continuous and incremental without any one party ever monopolizing patronage. The analysis of the size and expansion of the state is more persuasive than that of its effectiveness, for which O'Dwyer relies almost exclusively on interviews. Unfortunately, his primary evidence is scarcely...