2
contracted worldwide throughout the 1980s and 1990s,
3
it has expanded in both absolute size and
in its share of employees in East Central Europe. This expansion is not accompanied by
increased effectiveness: for example, in the Czech Republic and in Slovakia, where public
administration employment has especially increased, these states have not enforced more
regulations, extracted more taxes, or devolved more powers than their neighbors.
In several countries, moreover, the post-communist state is still subject to politicization:
controlled and exploited by political parties, rather than run by apolitical administrators or
formalized rules. Even as the communist monopoly on the state has faded, democratically
elected political parties now seek private benefits from the public domain of the state. The new
democratic actors continue to draw material resources from the state, and to favor allies in state
appointments and contracts.
4
Reforms that would remove the state from the grasp of the
governing parties: civil service laws, central oversight and control institutions, or regional
decentralization, have been significantly delayed in several cases. Some were passed only in
2001-2, over a decade after the first economic or political reforms.
This study argues that the degree to which the state is politicized is a function of party
competition: the more critical the opposition, the greater the threat of replacement it poses to the
parties in power. This threat leads the government to rapidly undertake the formal reforms of the
state, which limit parties’ ability to obtain state resources for private ends. Section I defines state
politicization, and shows the variation. Section II demonstrates how party competition led to
formal institutional barriers to politicization. Section III presents the broader theoretical context,
and shows why parties did not follow other strategies, such as clientelism or cartellization.
3
Schavio-Campo, S., do Tommaso, G., & Mukherjee, A. (1997) An International Statistical Survey of Government
Employment and Wages, World Bank Policy Research Working Paper #1806..
4
Ganev, V. (2000, March) Postcommunism as a historical episode of state building, or explaining the weakness of
the postcommunist state. Paper Presented at the 12
th
International Conference of Europeanists, Chicago. McFaul, M.
(1995) State Power, Institutional Change, and the Politics of Privatization in Russia. World Politics 2, 210-243.
Convention