(Page 3 of 35) - Re-Creating the State: Bureaucracies and the Distribution of Social Welfare Payments in Poland and Russia authored by Berenson, Marc.

the social welfare bureaucracies in these two states have not been subjected to personnel reforms

to the same extent as the tax system should allow for a closer examination of the extent to which

post-communist bureaucracies function in a Weberian rational manner. The truly puzzling

changes in the capacity of states that once governed so extensively demands further inquiry, and

looking at the public agencies responsible for distributing money on the ground should help us

find some of the ingredients for effective governance.

Why the Distribution of Social Welfare Payments?

Those studying the state, such as Atul Kohli, Joel Migdal and Theda Skocpol,

have

underscored the importance of states possessing the capability to implement official goals.

Based upon the definitions of Merilee Grindle, Michael Bratton, Atul Kohli and Vivienne Shue,

and Michael Mann,

then, I define “state capacity” as the means to define and to implement state

goals, the resources to implement state goals, the legitimacy to implement state goals, and the

ability to penetrate society.

See, for example, Migdal, Joel S., Strong Societies and Weak States: State-Society Relations and State Capabilities

in the Third World, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988); Migdal, Joel S., Atul Kohli, and Vivienne
Shue, ed., State Power and Social Forces: Domination and Transformation in the Third World, (Cambridge, UK:
Cambridge University Press, 1994); and Skocpol, Theda, “Bringing the State Back In: Strategies of Analysis in Current
Research,” in Peter Evans, Dietrich Reuschmeyer, and Theda Skocpol, eds., Bringing the State Back In (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1985.)

Most political science definitions of state capacity include a sense of the state’s ability to accomplish a task.

Merilee S. Grindle has identified a capable state as “one that exhibits the ability to establish and maintain effective
institutional, technical, administrative, and political functions.” (See Merilee S. Grindle, ed., Getting Good
Government: Capacity Building in the Public Sectors of Developing Countries, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1997.), p. 7. )

For Michael Bratton, “Capacity is the ability to implement political decisions.” (See Michael Bratton ,

“Peasant-State Relations in Post-Colonial Africa: Patterns of Engagement and Disengagement” in Joel S. Migdal,
Atul Kohli, and Vivienne Shue, ed., p. 236.) Related to this is the question of what it means “to define” a specific
policy agenda. Hence, to be able to set the rules in their societies (often through bureaus/state agencies) and to
ensure the consistency of those rules, states must possess the means to define and to implement state goals. In
addition, Bratton states that capacity exists when an organization possesses a full range of resources to get things
done and that legitimacy is particularly important in maintaining capacity (Bratton, p. 236).

Finally, the capacity to “penetrate and coordinate activities of society” has been regarded as a critical

assessment of state power. (See Kohli and Shue, “State Power and Social Forces: On Political Contention and
Accommodation in the Third World,” in Kohli, Migdal, Shue, p. 321.) With respect to this capacity to penetrate,
Michael Mann has coined the phrase “infrastructural power,” which he defines as “the capacity of the state actually
to penetrate civil society, and to implement logistically political decisions throughout the realm.” (See Michael
Mann, Michael, The Sources of Social Power: Volume II: The Rise of Classes and Nation-States, 1760-1914,
(Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 113.)