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State structures and political processes outside the CMEA: a comparison
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 May 2009
Abstract
Although state structures among non-CMEA NICs varied widely, all were fundamentally different from state structures within the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance. Moreover, because those differences were as much in kind as in degree, even nominally similar strategy choices and political processes were actually the product of different causes, shaped by different objectives and political actors, accomplished with different instruments, and followed by different international and domestic consequences. At the same time, although the substance of state structure and economic strategy in Eastern Europe and the NICs was different, the relationship between structure and strategy was similar. In both areas, state structures define problems, possibilities, and political resources; yet strategy was the result of differentiated political processes in which elites mobilized allies at home and abroad to formulate solutions to the issues and opportunities that state structures created.
- Type
- 4. Responding to International Economic Change outside the CMEA
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- Copyright © The IO Foundation 1986
References
1 See Chalmers Johnson's comment in this volume.
2 For an elaboration of these structural features, see Ellen Comisso, “Introduction: State Structures, Political Processes, and Collective Choice in CMEA States,” in this volume.
3 By “nation-state” or “state,” I mean what is called in Yugoslavia the “socio-political community” (druStveno-polititka zajednica). I do not mean driava, which in this analysis corresponds to my use of the term “state administration.” I use the term “nation-state” to mean the form sovereign politico-territorial organization tends to take in the 20th century (as opposed, for example, to empires or city-states); a nation-state can thus comprise several distinct nationalities, all of which carry passports bearing the name of a single national government. In addition, when I use the term “state organization” or “institution,” I mean any public body established under law. State organizations in Yugoslavia are normally “self-managed” in one way or another (the major exception is the armed forces), although their functions differ. Some are directly engaged in economic or productive activity: these are “enterprises.” Others perform regulatory functions (local, republic, and national governments). A third type supplies social services (schools, hospitals, etc.), while still others are largely concerned with financial transactions (banks). All, however, are public bodies and thus state institutions. The mass organizations (such as the trade unions or even the LCY), in contrast, are secondary associations whose purposes are self-defined rather than legally prescribed and whose membership is voluntary rather than legally regulated.
4 According to Guillermo O'Donnell, technocratic elites are those occupying “positions in a social structure which require applications of modern technology as an important part of their daily routine.… This category is constituted by individuals applying modern technology, and not by those concerned mainly with the expansion of scientific technological knowledge.” See O'Donnell, , Modernization and Bureaucratic Authoritarianism (Berkeley: Institute of International Studies, University of California, 1979), p. 30Google Scholar. Furthermore, leaders of organizations of wage and salary earners and civilian political leaders in general are not “incumbents of technocratic roles: their activities do not usually require extensive education and routine application of modern technology. Technocratic roles… develop around the managing of such activities as non-artisan industry, planning, government, the military, and communications and control.” Ibid., p. 31.
5 Hence it is hardly surprising that attempts to apply models of policy-making processes drawn from Western states proved highly distorting in the context of CMEA politics. See Comisso, , “Introduction,” pp. 203–6Google Scholar.
6 O'Donnell, , Modernization, p. 102Google Scholar.
7 See Pion-Berlin, David, “Ideas as Predictors: A Comparative Study of Coercion in Peru and Argentina” (Ph.D. diss., School of International Studies, University of Denver, 1984).Google Scholar
8 See Schmitter, Philippe, “The ‘Portugalization’ of Brazil?” in Stepan, Alfred, ed., Authoritarian Brazil (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1973), pp. 179–233Google Scholar.
9 See Evans, Peter, Dependent Development (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979).Google Scholar