Persistent State Weakness in the Global Age

Vesna Bojicic-Dzelilovic, Denisa Kostovicova

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9780754676126
• eBook ISBN: 9781317082057
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Persistent State Weakness in the Global Age addresses the question of why state weakness in the global era persists. It debunks a common assumption that state weakness is a stop-gap on the path to state failure and state collapse. Informed by a globalization perspective, the book shows how state weakness is frequently self-reproducing and functional. The interplay of global actors, policies and norms is analyzed from the standpoint of their internalization in a weak state through transnational networks. Contributors examine the reproduction of partial and discriminatory rule at the heart of persistent state weakness, drawing on a wide geographical range of case studies including the Middle East, the Balkans, the post-Soviet states and sub-Saharan Africa. The study of state-weakening dynamics related to institutional incapacity, colonial and war legacies, legitimacy gaps, economic informality, democratization and state-building provides an insight into durability and resilience of weak states in the global age.

Part I Capacity Approaches

DOI: 10.4324/9781315600093-2

Chapter 1 Understanding Leviathan's Malaise: Stateness and the Crisis of Governability in Post-communist Polities

Venelin I. Ganev

DOI: 10.4324/9781315600093-3

Introduction

The argument that post-communist polities might have a ‘stateness’ problem, and that this problem might be crucially related to the socio-economic shocks which reverberated throughout the former Soviet domain, did not attract much attention until the late 1990s. By that time the fact that successive governments had failed to meet the expectations of their citizens was not in dispute. Virtually every piece of writing on the ‘second world’ contained a long litany of governmental failures. Surprisingly, however, key issues related to the functionality, effectiveness, capacity, organizational integrity, logistical wherewithal and specific modes of social embeddedness of state apparatuses remained understudied. It was scholars examining such issues who first suggested that post-communist societies experienced a rather dramatic fluctuation of stateness. This empirically-grounded argument conjures up novel interpretations of post-communist development trajectories and infuses fresh analytical perspectives into a stagnating scholarly discourse that has tended to straitjacket evidence from Eastern Europe into preconceived explanatory frameworks.

From critiques of neo-liberalism to analyses of stateness

The basic premise that undergirds inquiries into post-communist stateness might be formulated in the following way: the chronic underperformance of state structures should be taken seriously and explained in a non-reductionist manner. Commonsensical though it may sound, this idea went against the grain of hegemonic interpretations of post-communist transformations woven around the phrase ‘neoliberal reforms’. It was neo-liberal reforms that were habitually invoked in order to explain, among other things, the discrepancy between what citizens expected the state to be doing and what the state was actually doing. Just like other postcommunist fiascoes, this discrepancy occurred because East European elites opted for, or were ‘told’ to pursue, the wrong type of reforms, namely radical pro-market policies aimed at the re-creation of the Anglo-Saxon economic model. To the extent that the infrastructure of governance sustained damage that reduced the potential for benevolent state intervention, this damage was causally linked to the decision to build capitalism by design and should be understood as a corollary of the ideological premise that states must be deliberately dismantled in order to make room for markets. Strictly speaking, it is not state apparatuses that failed to deliver – it is neoliberal reforms that failed to deliver. The explanation of state dysfunctionality in post-communism is therefore indistinguishable from the ideological critique of markets and capitalism.

Why the phrase ‘neo-liberal reforms’ gained a hegemonic status in the scholarly discourse on post-communism is a question that cannot be fully answered here.¹ Suffice it to say that depictions of the crises-ridden post-communist polities that evoked the destructive effects of markets and the dehumanizing impact of capital generated all the excitement that goes with the construal of newly available evidence as a confirmation of preexisting beliefs; the statement that ‘Russia and Eastern Europe offer resounding corroborations of Marxist theories of global capitalism’ is fairly representative in that regard (Burawoy and Verdery 1999, 307). As factual knowledge about what was happening in post-communist countries began to accumulate, however, it became increasingly clear that boilerplate narratives relating how the old wine of Dickensian capitalism was being peddled in new IMF-labeled bottles belonged to the dubious genre which Jon Elster calls ‘storytelling’. To tell a story, Elster points out, ‘is to account for what happened as it might have happened (and perhaps did happen)’ (Elster 1989, 7). It is conceivable, indeed, that in a given country political elites who identify themselves as neo-liberals may take advantage of secure and lasting access to the highest echelons of power in order to launch a series of interconnected, ideologically coherent reforms intended to diminish the role of the state in societal affairs. Hypothetically, such a scenario might have unfolded in Eastern Europe as well. However, even a cursory look at what was actually happening in that region – as opposed to what might have happened or perhaps was happening – would quickly persuade unbiased observers that this hypothesis is easy to refute. Simply put, none of the sub-plots that make up the generic ‘shock therapy’ story – the ascent of neo-liberal elites, the hegemonic style of governance they established, or their ideological zeal which was translated into a deliberate dismantling of the state – are supported by the facts.

1 For a critique of hegemonic anti-neoliberalism, see Ganev 2005, 343–379.

To begin with, the assertion that 1989 marked the beginning of a decade-long hegemony of radical pro-market ideas is demonstrably untrue. Scholars familiar with local histories and sensibilities in Eastern Europe point out that ‘vested interests in capitalism are, by definition and tradition, minimal’, and exhaustive surveys of economic developments in the region revealed that ‘the actual cases of shock therapy are very few’ (Bunce 1999, 769–781). Also demonstrably untrue is the argument that after the implosion of communist regimes neo-liberals rose to power. Almost none of the strong and influential leaders who emerged in Eastern Europe after 1989 can be plausibly characterized as neoliberal and, in contrast, public figures who were faithful neo-liberals remained marginalized and weak (Ganev 2005).

Equally misleading is the view that all post-communist rulers associated governance with the administering of a set of pro-market reforms on a ‘shocked’ society. Empirical studies make it quite clear that across the region successive governments did not follow a single strategy of reform – the prevalent style of policy-making was not consensual adherence to sanctified economic tenets but rather ‘democratic policy alternation’, i.e. inconsistent oscillation between very different blueprints for reform (Orenstein 2001, 128). Furthermore, it is disturbingly simplistic to assert that post-communist socio-economic landscapes were dramatically reshaped by governments ideologically committed to disregarding societal needs In fact, the acts of the allegedly autonomous post-communist states were conditioned by local circumstances and distinctly non-ideological considerations. Social policies throughout the region reflected not an unwavering commitment to a minimalistic neo-liberal state, but ‘country-specific historical experiences’ (Inglot 2003, 240). Privatized assets were distributed not in accordance with the advice of Western experts, but in accordance with the interests of managers of state-owned enterprises (McFaul 1996, 1–22). Retirement provisions were amended not in order to strengthen fiscal discipline but in response to politicians’ expectations about the voting behavior of pensioners (Vanhuysse 2006). Allegedly ‘promarket’ economic policies were intended not to impress IMF representatives but to benefit ‘functioning networks of trust’ and facilitate ‘the pursuit of rents in a concrete institutional environment’ (Stanchev 2001, 56). There is ample evidence that suggests, therefore, that during the 1990s, decisions about who got what, when and how were guided not by a passion for the laissez-faire approach but by the self-interested calculus of state agents wishing to please important political constituencies. Indeed, to the extent that there was a cross-regional pattern of governance it definitely did not feature a state acting in glorious detachment from its social environment – the emerging mode of governance observable in every post-communist country was ‘clientelist corruption’ based on tight bonds between state and non-state actors (Sajo 2002, 3).

Finally, one can effortlessly prove that the third sub-plot associated with neo-liberalism, the scaling down of the state to make room for markets, never materialized. Simply put, throughout the 1990s post-communist states grew – at impressive rates (Gzymala-Busse 2007, 134–136). Whatever the ideas that propelled post-communist reforms, such ideas did not hinder the continuing expansion of administrative apparatuses and existing bureaucracies. The palpable dysfunctionality of post-communist states thus cannot be attributed to an ideologically driven effort to curb or roll back the state’s involvement in societal affairs.

As the 1990s wore on, then, it became apparent that the attempt to posit a connection between the crises of early post-communism and ‘neo-liberalism’ went too far in terms of isolating a parsimonious explanatory formula from the inconvenient clutter of facts. Evidence-based accounts undoubtedly lent credence to the claim that governments did little to alleviate a ‘transition’ that proved to be much more difficult, costly and painful than anyone anticipated. Such accounts also made it hard to see why this finding should be causally linked to something called ‘neo-liberal pro-market reforms’. And as doubts about the explanatory potential of critiques of shock therapy became more difficult to dismiss, a set of previously overlooked questions began to attract the attention of intrigued observers: why did the supply of public goods diminish even though the legitimacy of government interventions in socio-economic affairs was never questioned? Why were policies failing despite the fact that their content varied considerably in different countries? Why did the usability of bureaucratic apparatuses diminish even though their size increased? The time was ripe for recognizing that the fluctuation of stateness and the symptoms of ungovernability pose distinct analytical challenges.

The crisis of post-communist governability: a Hobbesian interpretation

Stephen Holmes was arguably the first observer of post-communist politics who addressed these issues head-on and suggested that they could be adequately approached if analyses of the organizational aspects of the state were incorporated into the discourse on post-communism. He asserted that ‘the universal problem of post-communism, which cuts across the enormous variety of countries involved, is the crisis of governability’ and depicted this crisis in terms of ‘administrative decay’, ‘institutional collapse’ and ‘state weakness’ (Holmes 1996, 50; 1997). Explanations of this ‘universal problem’, Holmes pointed out, were not intended to render obsolete or replace what he called ‘the great questions of the day’, namely, ‘why has democratic and market reform turned out to be such an arduous process? … What are the necessary conditions for the consolidation of a well-functioning market democracy? And what are the existing obstacles … to the creation of these preconditions?’ (Holmes 1996, 25). Such questions should remain the focal points of scholarly concerns. More enlightening answers to them will only become available, however, if research programs on post-communist politics are recalibrated in order to yield a better understanding of the ‘crisis of governability’.

The notion of ‘governability’ obviously lends itself to various interpretations. In the context of post-communist studies, however, the most compelling exegete of this notion is Thomas Hobbes who urged us not to forget that the state is a ‘mortal god’ – and that when its mortality manifests itself societies and individuals are destined to lose their ‘peace and defense’. It was Hobbes who persuasively invoked the proposition that ‘sovereign power is not as hurtful as the want of it’ in order to explain the trials and tribulations of modern political communities (Hobbes 1651/1968, 132, 141). And therefore it is Hobbes’s insights that constitute the basic premise of state-centered studies of post-communist politics, namely that systematic examinations of the post-communist political condition should focus on the symptoms and causes of Leviathan’s malaise.

The heuristic potential of a Hobbesian interpretation of the crisis of governability in the former Soviet world is considerable. To begin with, the notion that Leviathan might be stricken by malaise provides the lens for a more focused and empirically more adequate interpretation of the specific troubles that unsettled the lives of so many people during the first decade of post-communist transformations. Such a lens allows us to see, for example, that the diminished supply of vital public goods was linked not to the cruel austerity of reformers, but to the corrupt behavior of low-ranking state officials free to operate in the absence of ‘some coercive power to compel men equally to the performance of their covenants by the terror of some punishment, greater than the benefit they expect by the breach of their covenant’. Likewise, the victimization of the socially weak by rapacious up-and-coming entrepreneurs was not an unavoidable by-product of the egoistical pursuit of self-interest, but an instantiation of the general principle that when there is no ‘civil power’ looming ‘over parties promising’, then ‘successful wickedness [will] obtain the name of virtue’. Furthermore, the criminalization of the public sphere was not a logical response to the imperatives of primitive accumulation of capital, but a consequence of the fact that ‘where there is no commonwealth … everything is his that getteth it, and keepeth it by force’. The rampant lawlessness in early post-communism should therefore be construed not as laissez-faire bacchanalia, but as a confirmation of the truth that laws – including social entitlements and welfare provisions – will count for little ‘without a sword in the hands of a man, or men, to cause those laws to be put in execution’ (Hobbes 1651/1996, 113, 114, 161, 186).

More broadly, a Hobbesian interpretation of the crisis of governability as a stateness problem conveys a specific analytical claim_ explanatory models that link the ‘outputs’ of political processes (such as an economic downturn, social suffering, or the criminalization of the public sphere) to concrete policy ‘inputs’ (such as blueprints for reform mirroring a ‘Washington consensus’) are not universally applicable. Hence, in certain historical and institutional contexts, efforts to understand the dynamics propelling change should target the ‘black box’ – the ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• List of Abbreviations
• Notes on Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: State Weakening and Globalization
• Part I Capacity Approaches
• Part II Historical Approaches
• Part III Policy Approaches
• Part IV Implications
• Conclusion: Persistent State Weakness and Issues for Research, Methodology and Policy
• Index