Suchergebnisse

This text reconciles the conflicting evidence of simultaneous improvements in the governance of post-Soviet states and the unmistakable signs of growing predation and systemic corrpution. To better understand how corruption and statism can coincide with improved governance, Thieves, Opportunists, and Autocrats focuses on the varying ways in which legislatures and bureaucrats have drafted regulatory policy-the state's key economic policy tool in capitalist socieites-and implemented it in Russia and Kazakhstan.

"This book examines the development of business interest representation in the postcommunist countries of Eastern Europe and Eurasia. The central argument is that abusive regulatory regimes discourage the formation of business associations. At the same time, poor regulatory enforcement tends to encourage associational membership growth. Academic research often treats special interest groups as vehicles of protectionism and non-productive collusion. This book challenges this perspective with evidence of market-friendly activities of industry associations as well as their benign influence on patterns of public governance. Careful analysis of cross-national quantitative data that spans more than 25 countries, as well as the qualitative examination of the development of business associations in Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Croatia, shows that postcommunist business associations function as substitutes for state and private mechanisms of economic governance. They challenge corrupt bureaucracy and contribute to the establishment of effective and predictable regulatory regimes. These arguments and empirical findings put the long-standing issues of economic regulations, public goods, and collective action in a new theoretical perspective"--

While theoretical arguments distinguish regulatory policies from the institutional mechanisms of their implementation, empirical accounts often conflate the official regulatory policies of the government with the unofficial regulatory burden emanating from corruption and red tape. Building on the literature that emphasizes a separate and non-trivial effect of regulatory enforcement, this article identifies bureaucratic discretion as an important institutional factor that conditions the effects of regulatory policy on the business environment. An analysis of cross-sectional data covering 119 economies demonstrates that, under high levels of bureaucratic discretion, state regulatory involvement has no effect on the business environment. Low levels of bureaucratic discretion, however, accentuate the link between light regulatory burden and a business-friendly economic environment.