Runaway State Building: How Political Parties Shape States in Postcommunist Eastern Europe

Abstract

Why has the rate of expansion of postcommunist state administrations varied so widely among countries that are at comparable stages of economic transition, have similar formal institutions, and have been equally exposed to the dynamics of EU integration? Based on a close comparison of Poland, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia, the author argues that the critical factor in postcommunist state building is the robustness of party competition. The legacy of communism creates strong pressures for patronage politics, which swells the administration, but it is party competition that determines whether the predisposition to patronage politics in fact becomes the practice of patronage politics. The number of state administrative personnel has expanded significantly more in countries where party system development has stalled, and party competition has failed to constrain the party(ies) of government.

Political Parties, Clientelism, and Bureaucratic Reform

“…Golden (2003) also finds that bureaucratic inefficiencies in the postwar Italian system improved the electoral prospects of legislators by facilitating patronage. Similarly, O'Dwyer (2004) shows that patronage-based parties are linked to inefficiencies and larger numbers of administrative personnel in Postcommunist Eastern Europe. Geddes (1994) also focuses on the incentives of politicians to pursue bureaucratic reforms in a detailed study of Latin American countries.…”

Political Elites and Decentralization Reforms in the Post-Socialist Balkans

“…The question here is how exactly decentralization and patronage are linked. Poland, another post-socialist state in Eastern Europe, is a prime example where we see how political parties abused partisan bargaining over decentralization reforms for their own gains by maximizing patronage and bloating public sector employment (O'Dwyer 2004).…”

The forensics of patronage: Identifying the linkage between parties and public sector employment in Serbia

“…The roots of political patronage have been found in structural factors such as lower levels of economic development and poverty (Kitschelt, 2000;Kitschelt and Wilkinson, 2007;Lemarchand, 1972;Scott, 1972;Calvo and Murillo, 2004;Stokes, 2011;Wantchekon, 2003;Weitz-Shapiro, 2012), historical legacies such as the close state-society linkages in post-communist states (Kopecky and Spirova, 2011;Sehring, 2009: 76) and in the timing and nature of political party system development as well as the sequencing of the creation of party systems and professional bureaucracies (O'Dwyer, 2004;Shefter, 1994). While most studies have focused on patronage as being endemic to less developed countries, a growing body of work has examined its continued presence in modern Europe and Asia and its rise and persistence in the former-communist countries of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union (Kopecky, Mair and Spirova, 2012;Kopecky and Spirova, 2011;O'Dwyer, 2006).…”

“…Students of patronage practices are thus forced to use proxies or other methodological compromises in order to identify and assess their topic of interest. One such comprise is to use national-level aggregate numbers of employees or national-level expenditures on payrolls or projects as an indication of higher levels of patronage (Gordin, 2002;O'Dwyer, 2004). Such studies are subject to criticism regarding the validity of measures (aggregate payroll and employment measures could vary for any number of reasons other than patronage) and the small-N problem inherent in treating a small number of states as a single unit of analysis.…”