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The postcommunist transitions produced two very different types of states. The “contractual” state is associated with the countries of Eastern Europe, which moved toward democratic regimes, consensual relations with society, and clear boundaries between political power and economic wealth. The “predatory” state is associated with the successors to the USSR, which instead developed authoritarian regimes, coercive relations with society, and poorly defined boundaries between the political and economic realms. This book shows how the cumulative result of the many battles between state coercion and societal capital over taxation gave rise to these distinctive transition outcomes. The book highlights the interconnected paths that led from the fiscal crisis of the old regime through the revenue bargains of transitional tax regimes to the eventual reconfiguration of state–society relations. Focused comparison of Poland and Russia exemplify postcommunism's divergent institutional forms. The Polish case shows how conflicts over taxation influenced the emergence of a rule-of-law contractual state, social-market capitalism, and civil society. The Russian case reveals how revenue imperatives reinforced the emergence of a rule-by-law predatory state, concessions-style capitalism, and dependent society.

Twentieth-century Europe was an intense laboratory of capitalist experimentation. Confronted with economic booms and crises, technological revolutions, and economic globalization, Western Europe's governments constantly explored alternative ways of managing domestic economic systems and international commerce. Bridging comparative and international political economy, this book expands our understanding of the historic relationship between varieties of capitalism and international cooperation. It places multilateral institutions at the center of the study of capitalism, and highlights the role played by governments' multilateral strategies in shaping the national trajectories of capitalism in Great Britain, France, and Germany. The book shows that membership in international organizations such as the European Union and its precursors was an integral innovation in the domestic management of capitalism that came to play a central, if varied, role in shaping the evolution of modern market economies. Spanning six decades from the postwar period to the global crisis of 2008, the book details the opportunities and constraints that multilateral engagements entailed for reforms in national financial, corporate governance, industrial relations, and innovation systems. It shows how multilateral institutions served to reinforce and at times to undermine ambitious domestic reform programs and deepens our understanding of modern capitalism in Europe and offers valuable lessons for regions beyond its borders.

This book suggests that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is a purposive actor in world politics, primarily driven by a set of homogenous economic ideas, with professional staff who emerged from an insular set of American-trained economists. The IMF treats countries differently depending on whether that staff trusts the country's top officials; that trust in turn depends on the educational credentials of the policy team that Fund officials face across the negotiating table. Intellectual differences thus lead to lasting economic effects for the citizens of countries seeking IMF support. Based on deep archival research in IMF archives and personnel files, the book argues that the IMF has been the Johnny Appleseed of neoliberalism: neoliberal policymakers sprout and take root in countries that have spent recent decades living under the Fund's conditional lending arrangements. The book's argument is supported through quantitative measures and illustrates the dynamics of relations between the Fund and client countries in a detailed examination of newly available archives of four periods in Argentina's long and often bitter relations with the IMF.

The Development Dance is about how donor countries and recipient governments negotiate the delivery of foreign aid. The book provides a conceptual framework for understanding donor-government relations and a theory for explaining the sustainability of aid delivery mechanisms. Drawing on extensive in-country fieldwork in four sub-Saharan African countries, as well as an original survey of development practitioners in twenty countries, the book points to a fundamental problem in the delivery of aid: the policy compromises reached by donor agencies and recipient governments are rarely politically sustainable. Commitment problems constrain the policy compromises reached by donors and recipients. As a result, fads and fashions dominate development cooperation, and the delivery of foreign aid is not determined by effectiveness alone. If we want to know whether an aid delivery mechanism is likely to be sustained over the long term, we need to look at whether it induces credible commitments from both donor agencies and recipient governments.

What explains Eurozone member-states' divergent exposure to Europe's sovereign debt crisis? Deviating from current fiscal and financial views, this book focuses on labor markets in a narrative that distinguishes the winners from the losers in the euro crisis. The book argues that Europe's monetary union was structured in a way that advantaged the corporatist labor markets of its northern economies in external trade and financial lending. Northern Europe's distinct economic advantage lay not with its fiscal capabilities, which were not that different from those of southern Eurozone countries, but with its wage-setting institutions. Through highly coordinated collective bargaining, the euro North persistently undercut the inflation performance of southern trading partners, destining them to a perpetual cycle of competitive decline and external borrowing. While northern Europe's corporatist labor markets were always low-inflation performers, monetary union ultimately made their wage-setting institutions toxic for the South. The euro's institutional predecessor, the European Monetary System, included economic and institutional mechanisms that facilitated macroeconomic adjustment and convergence between the common currency's corporatist and noncorporatist economies. Combining cross-national statistical analysis with detailed qualitative case studies of Denmark, Germany, Italy, Ireland, the Netherlands, and Spain, the book reveals that monetary union's removal of these mechanisms allowed external imbalances between these two blocs to grow unchecked, underpinning the crisis in which Europe currently finds itself. Rather than achieving the EU's goal of an ever-closer union, the common currency produced a monetary environment that destabilized the economic integration of its diverse labor markets.

The small, open economies of Nordic Europe are hailed as paragons of good governance, adapting flexibly to rapid, technological change and shifting patterns of economic competition. But they have also made strikingly poor policy choices and suffered devastating economic crises, as evidenced by the Finnish and Swedish banking crises of the early 1990s, Finnish dependence on Nokia, and Iceland's financial meltdown. Good Governance Gone Bad argues that the reasons for these two, seemingly contradictory phenomena is one and the same. The dense, cohesive relationships that enable these countries to adapt to economic crises with radical reform and restructuring render them vulnerable to policy overshooting and overinvestment. After examining the rise and decline of heavy industry in postwar Sweden, the emergence and disruption of the Finnish ICT industry, and Iceland's impressive but short-lived reign as a financial powerhouse, this book tests the argument against ten similar and contrasting cases in Europe and North America. In doing so, it demonstrates how small and large states alike can learn from the Nordic experience.

This book uses a small number of well-documented cases to determine both how and why those affiliated with the Camorra leave Italy and pursue criminal activities in five other European countries: Germany, Holland, France, Spain, and the United Kingdom. ‘Camorra’ is a label used to describe many different individuals, families, clans, and alliances; it is a loose criminal association interested in money and power, combining elements of a traditional secret society as well as a business. The text uses court documents, multiple interviews, and focuses on sixteen cases to determine why and how individuals associated with the Camorra export themselves and their activities.

Over the past two decades, bazaars mushroomed in the new Central Asian states, where rule-of-law institutions are weak and corruption high. How did bazaars grow and thrive in such an inhospitable context? Order at the Bazaar answers this question through an analysis of bazaars in Kyrgyzstan. They are conceptualized as islands of order within a chaotic national context. The findings demonstrate that those at the bazaar, including traders, private land owners, and municipal officials, create order themselves in the absence of a coherent national government apparatus and bureaucratic state. Drawing on original interviews, archival sources, and participant observation, the book illuminates the changing meanings and practices of older traders at bazaars, including the ways in which they adapted Soviet and pre-Soviet institutions and organizational forms to a new market setting. In these settings, they deliberated and advocated for favorable policies and conditions, mediated disputes, channelled information, and served as role models for traders. The findings have relevance beyond the bazaars and borders of this small country; they illuminate how economic activity can operate in weak rule-of-law contexts, and more specifically how a variety of organizational forms come to constitute the order that underpins new market economies.

Bank bailouts in the aftermath of the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the onset of the Great Recession brought into sharp relief the power that the global financial sector holds over national politics, and provoked widespread public outrage. This book details the varying relationships between financial institutions and national governments by comparing national bank rescue schemes in the United States and Europe. It starts with a broad overview of bank bailouts in more than twenty countries. It then examines three pairs of countries where similar outcomes might be expected: the United States and United Kingdom, France and Germany, Ireland and Denmark. The book finds substantial variation within these pairs. In some cases the financial sector is intimately involved in the design of bailout packages; elsewhere it chooses to remain at arm's length. Such differences are often ascribed to one of two conditions: either the state is strong and can impose terms, or the state is weak and corrupted by industry lobbying. The book presents a third option, where the inaction of the financial sector critically shapes the design of bailout packages in favor of the industry. It demonstrates that financial institutions were most powerful in those settings where they could avoid a joint response and force national policymakers to deal with banks on a piecemeal basis. The power to remain collectively inactive has had important consequences for bailout arrangements and ultimately affected how the public and private sectors have shared the cost burden of these massive policy decisions.

This book explores the unsung revolutionary campaign to transform postcommunist central banks from command-economy cash cows into Western-style monetary guardians. The book argues that a powerful transnational central banking community concentrated in Western Europe and North America integrated postcommunist central bankers into its network, shaped their ideas about the role of central banks, and helped them develop modern tools of central banking. The detailed comparative studies of central bank development in Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Russia, and Kyrgyzstan span from the birth of the campaign in the late 1980s to the challenges faced by central bankers after the global financial crisis. As the comfortable certainties of the past collapse around them, today's central bankers in the postcommunist world and beyond find themselves torn between allegiance to their transnational community and its principles on the one hand and their increasingly complex and politicized national roles on the other.

This book demonstrates how several emerging market and developing countries (EMDs) managed to reregulate cross-border financial flows in the wake of the global financial crisis, despite the political and economic difficulty of doing so at the national level. It also shows that some EMDs, particularly the BRICS coalition, were able to maintain or expand their sovereignty to regulate cross-border finance under global economic governance institutions. The book combines econometric analysis with in-depth interviews with officials and interest groups in select emerging markets and policymakers at the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organization, and the G-20 to explain key characteristics of the global economy. The book develops a theory of countervailing monetary power that shows how emerging markets can counter domestic and international opposition to the regulation of cross-border finance. Although many countries were able to exert countervailing monetary power in the wake of the crisis, such power was not sufficient to stem the magnitude of unstable financial flows that continue to plague the world economy. Drawing on this theory, the book outlines the significant opportunities and obstacles to regulating cross-border finance in the twenty-first century.

How can policymakers effectively reduce poverty? Most mainstream economists advocate promoting economic growth, on the grounds that it generally reduces poverty while bringing other economic benefits. However, this dominant hypothesis offers few alternatives for economies that are unable to grow, or in places where economic growth fails to reduce or actually exacerbates poverty. This book draws on extensive fieldwork in two Chinese provinces—Yunnan and Guizhou—that are exceptions to the purported relationship between economic growth and poverty reduction. In Yunnan, an outward-oriented developmental state, one that focuses on large-scale, urban development, has largely failed to reduce poverty, even though it succeeded in stimulating economic growth. Provincial policy shaped roads, tourism, and mining in ways that often precluded participation by poor people. By contrast, Guizhou is a micro-oriented state, one that promotes small-scale, low-skill economic opportunities—and so reduces poverty despite slow economic growth. It is no coincidence that this Guizhou approach parallels the ideas encapsulated in the “scientific development view” of China's current president Hu Jintao. After all, Hu, when he was Guizhou's leader, helped establish the micro-oriented state in the province. The book's conclusions have implications for our understanding of development and poverty reduction, economic change in China, and the thinking behind China's policy decisions.

Bolder economic policy could have addressed the persistent bouts of deflation in post-bubble Japan, claims this book. Despite warnings from economists, intense political pressure, and unconventional policy options to address this problem, Japan's central bank, the Bank of Japan (BOJ), resisted taking the bold actions that this book claims would have significantly helped. With Prime Minister Abe Shinzō's return to power, Japan finally shifted course at the start of 2013 with the launch of Abenomics—an economic agenda to reflate the economy—and Abe's appointment of new leadership at the BOJ. The BOJ's resistance to experimenting with bolder policy stemmed from entrenched policy ideas that were hostile to activist monetary policy. The book explains how these policy ideas evolved over the course of the BOJ's long history and gained dominance because of the closed nature of the broader policy network. The explanatory power of policy ideas and networks suggests a basic inadequacy in the dominant framework for analysis of the politics of monetary policy derived from the literature on central bank independence. This approach privileges the interaction between political principals and their supposed agents, central bankers; but this book shows clearly that central bankers' views, shaped by ideas and institutions, can be decisive in determining monetary policy. Through a combination of institutional analysis, quantitative empirical tests, in-depth case studies, and structured comparison of Japan with other countries, the book shows that, ultimately, the decision to adopt aggressive monetary policy depends largely on the bankers' established policy ideas and policy network.

This book shows that politics is an omnipresent part of the economics of wine and of economic activity in general. Based on a four-year research project encompassing fieldwork in France, Spain, Italy, and Romania, the book examines the causes and effects of a radical reform adopted at the EU level in 2008. Regulatory change politically transformed the rationale of EU support to the wine industry, from shaping the supply side to encouraging producers to adapt to the demands of a supposedly “new consumer.” To explain the adoption and impact of the reform, the book develops an analytical framework to capture the actors—their perceptions, preferences, and interdependencies—within an industry crisscrossed by institutions located at the global, European, national, and local scales. This framework combines concepts and lessons from historical institutionalism and regulationist economics, Bourdieu's field theory, and the sociology of public policymaking. The book rejects accounts that attribute policy change simply to material determinants and “the invisible hand of the market.” It emphasizes the crucial importance of institutions within sectors of the economy, and proposes ways to bolster constructivist approaches to political economy by linking industrial change to scientific and bureaucratic balances of power. This book's novel focus on different levels of institutional impact should prove influential in the study of the politics of industry, and more broadly within the comparative analysis of capitalism.

The Venture Capital State investigates the diffusion of the globally acclaimed Silicon Valley venture capital (VC) policy model. The spread of this model has been ubiquitous, with at least 45 states across a range of countries, in terms of geography, culture, and size, attempting to build local VC markets. In contrast to the transcendent exuberance for VC, policymakers in each and every state have implemented a distinct set of policies. Even states of similar population and economic sizes that are geographically and culturally proximate, and at comparable levels of industrialization, have not implemented similar policies. This book explains why: policymakers are “contextually rational” in their learning; their context-rooted norms shape preferences, underpinning their distinct valuations of studied models. The normative context of those learning about the policy – how they see themselves and what they deem as locally appropriate – informs their design. Findings are based upon deep investigations of VC policymaking in an East Asian cluster of states: Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore. These states’ VC successes reflects their ability to effectively adapt the highly-lauded model for their local context, not their policymakers’ approximation of the Silicon Valley policy model.

At the close of the twentieth century, Denmark, Finland, and Ireland emerged as unlikely centers for high-tech competition. This book reveals how these historically low-tech countries managed to assume leading positions in new industries such as biotechnology, software, and telecommunications equipment. In each case, countries used institutions that are commonly perceived to delay restructuring to accelerate the redistribution of resources to emerging enterprises and industries. The book identifies two different patterns of institutional innovation and economic restructuring. Irish policymakers worked with industry and labor representatives to contain costs and expand market competition. Denmark and Finland adopted a different strategy, converting an established tradition of private-public and industry-labor cooperation to invest in high-quality inputs such as human capital and research. Both strategies facilitated movement into new high-tech industries but with distinctive political and economic consequences. In explaining how previously slow-moving states entered dynamic new industries, the book identifies a broader range of strategies by which countries can respond to disruptive challenges such as economic internationalization, rapid technological innovation, and the shift to services.