1
Introduction
The expansion and politicization of the post-communist state has confounded both
policymakers and scholars. The fall of communism in 1989 was to have ended a fusion of party
and state, of politics and administration. Under communism, the state was a minion of the
communist party, extracting resources and private benefits for the benefit of the party, rather than
serving the citizenry. Staffing of government and state structures took place via the
nomenklatura system: an extensive list of positions whose occupants had to be vetted by the
party. The planned economy itself made most workers into employees of the state, and
demanded extensive administrative personnel, while the low differentiation of state and party
functions made “political clout the foundation for economic control.”
1
And, as many of its
unfortunate clients would attest, the communist state was both bloated and inefficient.
With the withdrawal of the state from the economy and the polity after 1989, this unwieldy
behemoth of a state was expected to shrink in both size and scope, and become more
autonomous.
2
The regime’s collapse formally ended the communist party’s control and
duplication of state offices. Communist parties were now to become competitors in multiparty
democracies, and the new democratic state was now to become an apolitical and effective
administrative and executive force.
Yet the processes state rebuilding after communism have fallen short of these expectations.
The state has not grown any smaller: even as the employment in state administration has
1
Comisso, Ellen. “State Structures, Political Processes, and Collective Choice in CMEA states,” in Comisso, Ellen,
and Tyson, Laura D’Andrea, eds. Power, Purpose, and Collective Choice: Economic Strategy in Socialist States.
Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986, p. 32.
2
Shleifer, Andrei and Robert W. Vishny. The Grabbing Hand: Government Pathologies and their Cures.
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), Holmes, Stephen. “Cultural Legacies or State Collapse?:
Probing the Postcommunist Dilemma.” In Mandelbaum, Michael, ed., Postcommunism: Four Perspectives. (New
York, NY: Council on Foreign Relations, 1996).
Convention