This first book by Conor O'Dwyer adds to a growing and impressive collection of works on state building in postcommunist countries. In it he seeks to explain the variation in the growth of large patronage networks in state administrations in three central European countries—Poland, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia. In doing so, he looks to the relationship between the establishment of strong party systems and the ability of states to withstand the emergence of extensive patronage networks. Specifically, he posits (p. 13) that “the magnitude and character of administrative expansion is determined by the capacity of party competition to constrain patronage.” He concludes that taking all considerations into account, it is the presence or absence of a strongly competitive party system that most clearly explains the sleek state administrative structures in the Czech Republic and the bloated bureaucracy in Poland and Slovakia. The failure of these two countries, whose leaders had so keenly sought to dismantle the communist nomenklatura system, to gain control of what O'Dwyer calls “runaway state-building” is richly detailed and persuasively argued in this excellent book.

O'Dwyer takes up where Martin Shefter (Political Parties and the State: The American Historical Experience, 1994) and Leon Epstein (Political Parties in Western Democracies, 1967) left off. Both believed that if party building preceded the establishment of state building, the consolidation of a neutral civil service would be almost impossible. But O'Dwyer shows how sequencing explanations alone are insufficient for explaining the variation in state building. Rather, the form of party competition is also key to understanding whether uncontrolled patronage-led state building will emerge.

In Chapter 2, the author sets out the main argument (p. 35) that “robust and institutionalized party competition is critical if new democracies with unconsolidated states are to constrain patronage politics and avoid runaway state-building.” He sees three types of party competition: dominant-party systems (Slovakia), in which one party dominates and the rest are weak; weak-governance systems (Poland), in which both government and opposition parties are weak, fragmented, and underinstitutionalized; and responsible-party systems (Czech Republic), in which both government and opposition parties are strong and well organized. He explores the differences among these three countries' party systems on the basis of several dimensions, including party dominance, using vote differentials; number of effective parties, using Markku Laakso and Rein Taagepera's index of effective parties (“Effective Number of Parties: A Measure with Application to West Europe,” Comparative Political Studies 12 [no. 1, 1979]: 3–27); electoral volatility, using volatility measures of fluctuation of parties' vote shares from one election to another; party system closure, using Peter Mair's composite index (Party System Change, 1997); and internal party organization, using a variety of measures including centralization, leadership, program, and internal homogeneity.

In Chapter 3, O'Dwyer sets out very interesting data from interviews and other sources for these three countries. In Poland, for example, the leader of the Solidarity trade union, Marian Krzaklewski, promised during the 1997 parliamentary elections that four thousand of his supporters would receive state jobs if elected. But because of Poland's weak governance system, Solidarity was unable to dismiss four thousand of the previous government's supporters, and so simply made a net addition to the bureaucracy's size. By contrast, in Slovakia, where patronage also dominated the state bureaucracy, the HZDS (Movement for a Democratic Slovakia) was able to make sweeping personnel changes as it came to power, and in doing so minimized the bloating of the state apparatus. The growth in the size of the Czech Republic's civil service was smallest, increasing by only 16% up to 2000, as compared to 85% in Slovakia and an astonishing 137% in Poland. Concomitantly, interview responses showed that 84% of Czech administrative personnel felt secure from inappropriate pressure from political parties, compared to only 21% in Poland and 11% in Slovakia (p. 82). Admittedly, O'Dwyer's sample size for his survey was rather small, but the results are very suggestive nonetheless.

Chapters 4 to 6 provide case studies of how patronage politics emerged in regional governments, local governments, and welfare ministries. There is also a smaller case study in Chapter 3 on the respective ministries of foreign affairs. This section could well have been expanded into its own chapter (or a future article), given the microdetail that the author obviously gained in the process of collecting data. He paints a picture of life in these ministries at the beginning of the postcommunist period, with three wholly disparate groups jockeying for power inside each of the ministries—the old Soviet-era apparatchiks, the young graduates with diplomas from Western countries in foreign affairs and diplomacy, and friends of the new power elite. In the Czech republic, the apparatchiks were gradually cleared out by strict lustration rules, and by 1996 there existed a strict written code setting out the rules for entry into the ministry. Such a rule book had failed to materialize in Poland or Slovakia by 2000, where policy even in the most sensitive areas, like European Union accession, was driven by what O'Dwyer describes as “multiple, localized, and uncoordinated intervention in the state administration by the many members of the governing coalition” (p. 98). He details how, in Poland, the Solidarity-led coalition government set up parallel to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs a Department for European Integration, headed by an anti-European political appointee, and then thwarted the efforts of any experts to move EU accession forward, the result of which was that Poland failed to qualify for a significant amount of monetary assistance from the EU.

O'Dwyer's book provides an important and useful antidote to all the literature on EU accession because it shows the power of local political interests, when deeply embedded within the state, to deflect and shape external pressures. His chapter on regional politics also suggests that while EU pressures might increase efficiency over time, EU aid might just as easily provide an economic incentive for stagnation and clientalism. It also bears examining by those in comparative politics interested in the debate about whether multiparty or majoritarian systems produce better representation and better governance over time. O'Dwyer enters this debate between the proponents of Arend Lijphart (Patterns of Democracy, 1999) and G. Bingham Powell (Elections as Instruments of Democracy:Majoritarian and Proportional Visions, 2000) on the side of Powell, insofar as he sees the need to distinguish between advanced industrial democracies and emerging democracies, in which weak states in a multiparty system become captive to patronage politics, and in the process delegitimize the entire democratic project.

It will be another decade before we see the cumulative effect of these changes on state building. Will Poland and Slovakia be reined in by EU or popular pressures? It is too soon to tell, but O'Dwyer's excellent book is surely strong enough to warrant a sequel.