This chapter devises a synthetic ordering of the factors identified as impeding long-run development in Benin, namely corruption, weak public management, opacity of public decision-making and policy implementation, and excessive informality. These institutional weaknesses are traced back to proximate and ultimate causes, while in the other direction the economic consequences of these weaknesses are unfolded. We identify the immediate causes as political instability, elite capture of key state functions, weakness of the state, and the possibility of easy but illegal rents. In turn, these causes are linked to five deep factors: (1) neo-patrimonialism with multiple oligarchs; (2) a multiple ethnic groups; (3) a geographical/neighbourhood landscape in which Benin appears as a small country that possesses a long border with its big neighbour (Nigeria); (4) a legacy of centralised management of key economic sectors, dating back to the French colonial period; and (5) the heavy presence of aid agencies. Policy reforms aiming at overcoming or circumventing these institutional problems are then discussed.

An important feature of Iran’s political economy is the variety of opportunities it provides, through which individuals and groups can accrue economic benefits from and through the state. At the broadest level, the Iranian economy cannot be said to be in a healthy state. The Iranian economy is structurally unhealthy. But the economy’s maladies are products of, and also contributing factors to, means of personal enrichment for those with the right political connections. There are a number of areas to focus on, including the strong connections between the state and bazaari merchants; the perverse consequences of resource curses such as overreliance on oil and rampant corruption; the state’s efforts at various welfare schemes and the impulse toward statist economics; and the processes and consequences of pulling back from statism through privatization. All of these developments have combined to undermine the economy’s developmental potential. They have also coalesced to provide multiple means of patronage and clientelism in which the state plays a critical facilitating role. As such, Iran’s economy, diseased and underperforming as it is, provides important sources of support and resilience for the state.

This chapter argues that the democratic transition in Cambodia was a product of external imposition through the 1991 Paris Peace Agreement. The accords authorized the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia in 1992–93 to oversee the democratic transition by organizing multi-party elections and to assist in the drafting of a new liberal democratic constitution. Across the next two decades, Cambodia’s democracy went through a period of electoral authoritarianism and in 2017 plunged into a de facto one-party authoritarianism. These developments derived from Cambodia’s weak state capacity. Cambodia’s entrenched neo-patrimonialism kept the quality of governance low in terms of administrative and extractive capacity but kept coercive capacity against democratic forces strong. As popular demand for deeper democracy and government accountability and responsiveness intensified, the Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) strengthened the state’s capacity by increasing revenue collection, public service provision and the quality of the bureaucracy. However, this reform is unlikely to lead to democratic deepening due to the CPP’s determination to preserve its interests and its ideational inclination to transform Cambodia into a developmental authoritarian state where economic growth takes precedence over liberal democracy.

Chapter 5 “Disillusionment and Mobility (1983–2001)” argues that rational-legal administration did not exhaust the list of mezzo or organizational outcomes that resulted from RJ’s institutionalization. RJ’s rational-legal administration encountered six limitations that exposed and exacerbated the organization’s preexisting deficiencies, the IRI’s structural shortcomings, the shah’s neo-patrimonial legacies, and bureaucracy’s inherent flaws. These limitations included heightened centralization, intensified careerism, parliamentary entanglements, emerging corporatization, persistent redundancies, and dual executives. On a micro or individual level, these limitations and the inefficiency and stagnancy that they created caused some former RJ members to experience fatigue, apathy, and disillusionment. At the same time, RJ’s bureaucratization enabled other former members, particularly those who had lobbied for the organization to become a ministry, to experience political and social mobility as government officials, civil servants, and corporate executives – the very individuals whom former RJ members had initially despised as revolutionary activists in light of their anti-bureaucratic and anti-materialistic worldview.