Synopses & Reviews
Bringing together a top flight set of contributors, this book considers the problems and prospects for creating trustworthy and reliable public institutions since the transition from socialism in Central and Eastern Europe. The focus is on "second generation" issues of democratic consolidation in states where the basic structures of the market and the state have been established. The contributors raise important issues, such as corruption and participation, largely neglected during the first stage of the transition and that are of growing importance as several countries in the region move toward entry into the European Union. Highlighting problems and prospects of democratization with comparative import to other newly democratizing areas, this volume draws on the experience of those who have lived through and studied the transition and contrasts their insights with those of generalist scholars who study government accountability and democracy.
Review
"
Building a Trustworthy State in Post-Socialist Transition is an outstanding contribution to the study of the problems democratic consolidation in the former Communist world. The editors, Professors Susan Rose-Ackerman and János Kornai, both distinguished scholars of the economic transition, brought together a brilliant international cast of authors to examine the moral, legal and political problems of building 'trust' or 'social capital' without which in their view formally democratic institutions lack reliability and accountability, and therefore legitimacy in the deeper sense of that term. The double comparative perspective that runs through the volume is especially helpful to students of the 'more successful' Central European cases that are rightly contrasted both with consolidated Western and more authoritarian Eastern democracies."--Andrew Arato, author of
Civil Society, Constitution and Legitimacy"Kornai and Rose-Ackerman have put together a tightly focused, theoretically ambitious, empirically grounded set of essays on the problem of trust in post-socialist societies, the central issue in the second stage of transition. This outstanding team of scholars thinks deeply about the problem of developing institutions that are transparent, capable of responding to democratic pressures, and not held captive by those who managed to seize power in the first round of changes. The interdisciplinary and international set of authors brings an unusually rich diversity of theories and methods to the table, full of nuance and detail. This is a major contribution to our understanding of the issues, and the experiences detailed and the lessons learned in post-socialist Europe may well be brought to bear on an understanding and perhaps even a reform of societies farther West."--Kim Lane Scheppele, John J. O'Brien Professor of Law and Sociology, University of Pennsylvania
"Among its many contributions, this volume helps to create analytic clarity on the definition of corruption. Offe's original essay on this topic is impressive and should become a standard text on this issue...For those who believe there is reason to be concerned about corruption in transition economies, this volume addresses the issue from a number of standpoints, provides rich theoretical and some solid empirical work on the topic, and discusses important moral and governance issues." -- Mitchell Orenstein, Slavic Review
Synopsis
Building a Trustworthy State in Post-Socialist Transition considers the problems and prospects for creating trustworthy and reliable public institutions in the aftermath of the transition from socialism in Central and Eastern Europe. The volume draws on the experience of those who have lived through and studied the transition and contrasts their insights with those of generalist scholars who study government accountability and democracy. The contributions originated in the Collegium Budapest project on Honesty and Trust: Theory and Experience in the Light of the Post-Socialist Transition, organized by Janos Kornai and Susan Rose-Ackerman. A second volume entitled, Creating Social Trust in Post-Socialist Transition, is being published simultaneously."
Synopsis
An interdisciplinary collection that outlines the prospects and problems of developing a trustworthy state in Central and Eastern Europe after the collapse of the Socialist system
About the Author
János Kornai is Allie S. Freed Professor of Economics Emeritus, Harvard University and Fellow Emeritus, Collegium Budapest, Institute for Advanced Study.
Susan Rose-Ackerman is Henry R. Luce Professor of Jurisprudence (Law and Political Science), Yale University.
Table of Contents
Preface--Janos Kornai and Susan Rose-Ackerman * Introduction--Susan Rose-Ackerman *
Part I: Trust and Institutional Reform * Public Participation in Consolidating Democracies: Hungary and Poland--Susan Rose-Ackerman * Neutral Institutions: Implications for Government Trustworthiness in East European Democracies--András Sajó * Does Lustration Promote Trustworthy Governance? An Exploration of the Experience of Central and Eastern Europe--Cynthia M. Horne and Margaret Levi *
Part II: Corruption and State Capture * Political Corruption: Conceptual and Practical Issues--Claus Offe * The Inequality of Influence--Joel S. Hellman and Daniel Kaufmann * Effects of State Capture: Evidence from Russian Regions--Irina Slinko, Evgency Yakovlev, and Ekaterina Zhuravskaya * Regulation and Corruption in Transition: The Case of Russian Pharmaceutical Markets--Alexandra Vacroux * The Missing Incentive: Corruption, Anticorruption, and Reelection--Ivan Krastev and Georgy Ganev *
Part III: Transition to Democracy * Transition to Corporate Democracy?--Russell Hardin * Attitudes toward Democracy and Capitalism: A Western Benchmark--John Mueller * And Now for the Bad News--Bruce Ackerman