Why has Greece or the south of Italy not achieved the same levels of political accountability and bureaucratic autonomy as for example the Nordic states or Japan? How did Germany become such an efficient unitary state and how come it prospered in the second half of the 20th century?
These are some of the questions addressed by Francis Fukuyama in the second volume of “Political order and political decay”, a book that covers the period of “the industrial revolution to the globalization of democracy” (2014). Fukuyama digs into the historical roots of state building, rule of law and accountability, and, especially, of the difficult challenges posed by democratization in settings where state capability remains weak. Clientelism is a phenomenon that Fukuyama specifically stresses for understanding capacities of countries to function politically. Clientelism is the system of public offices being tied to political party-adherence, and where elections thus amount to elites trading favours, especially jobs and appointments in the public sector. Systematic mass clientelism is different from downright non-accountable corruption. According to Fukuyama, clientelism creates a primitive but economically highly damaging form of democratic accountability.
Clientelism in Greece
One of Fukuyama’s big theses is that the nature of a system and its level of success relies on the sequence of political development and transition. In Greece, democracy arrived before proper statehood. The country achieved universal male suffrage already in 1864 but had at the time no autonomous system of administration (a situation of “democracy before state”). Greek politicians so came to use the developing offices of the state as sources of political patronage, and in the 1870s Greece already had a civil service seven times the size of Britain’s ditto. The growth of the public sector at the expense of efficient and, later on, solvent government continued for one and a half century, debts peaking at record levels today.
There are many reasons both for the lack of a strong statehood and for the birth of the clientelist system in Greece. Greece started the modern era as an Ottoman province and its independence required significant outside help. For decades outsiders continued to influence Greek politics and borders. Even when the far-left parties offered potentially clientism-shaking ideologies, the United States, for example, would act in its own interest to support the Greek Clientelism over Communism.
Greeks tend to view the state machinery as illegitimate, not representing the people, and tax evasion is also widespread. Since public offices protect themselves from purging, switches in the party rule tend to result in additional offices in order to install party faithful officers. The system so creates a escalating gluttonous and ineffective public sector. Capitalism arrived late to Greece, since capturing public resources has been a real, and rather easy way to get wealthy.
Ending Clientelism
Fukuyama argues that the real division in Europe today is not between a hard-working, disciplinized north and an laid back dolce far niente south. Neither is it the one between countries with generous welfare states and those with a smaller public sector. The real opposition is between clientelistic Europe and a nonclientelistic Europe, he argues.
Nations that developed systems of public administration while under autocratic rule were able to create a degree of insulation that allowed bureaucracies to function relatively free of political manipulation. In nations that democratised before undertaking state reform, such as Greece, the order of democratic transition meant that the state apparatus was more exposed to manipulation (political patronage, clientelism). The public sector so started to be used as a source of patronage to gain political support and legitimacy.
Notes Fukuyama, clientelism is not the result of ignorance but of self-interest and a reorganization of government does not necessarily or automatically solve problems of clientelism per se. Reform is a political process, not a technical one and ideas are critical for how people view their interests.
Reform-favoring political coalitions are built by those who are not strong stakeholders in the current system. The far left in Greece in 2015 can be seen as strong stakeholders in the system — they have taken office and utilized the clientelistic system – but they can also be seen as eager reformers of the same. But, as Fukuyama points out, reform takes a great deal of time. Paperwork and empty promises may languish around for decades before some sort of impetus (“a shockwave”) forces political actors to actually reckon with it. Change requires leadership.
READING:
Fukuyama, F. (2014). Political order and political decay: From the industrial revolution to the globalization of democracy. Macmillan.
I find Fukuyama’s demonstration of political decay convincing and urgent. Democracies are subjected to political decay especially when ‘new elites’ have captured the system. According to Fukuyama this should not be viewed as a problem generic to democratic governance but particular to specific strands of democracy and democratic systems (the US, but also Italy and Japan).
In order to save some time, I have in the above blog text pasted some sentences from the notes from the fogbanking blogger (see: fogbanking.com) – these notes follow the book in Fukuyama’s language and terminology. At the fogbanking page you can also find Fukuyama’s illustrations on sequences in national developments based on the corner stones of i) state building, ii) rule of law and iii) accountability.
