Conceptualizing political power in the USSR: Patterns of binding and bonding

Urban, Michael

doi:10.1016/0039-3592(85)90064-x

Cited by 16 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 67 publications

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“…6. Examples of this behavior abound: Urban (1985) notes that the Soviet Union implicitly encouraged officials to engage in prohibited-corrupt-behaviors, and would selectively prosecute those that did not show sufficient zeal in serving their superiors. During the early 1990s in the PRC, the Shanghai prosecutor's office announced that 'able individuals' would be granted leniency in corruption cases if they repented for their acts (Sun, 2001).…”

Section: Argumentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Corruption and Ideology in Autocracies: Figure 1.

Hollyer

Wantchékon

2014

J Law Econ Organ

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Corruption is usually depicted in one of two ways: as stemming from a lack of government accountability, or from a lack of capacity. Neither depiction predicts that the structure of institutions meant to control corruption should vary across autocratic regimes. If corruption results from moral hazard between politicians and citizens, then all unaccountable governments should eschew anticorruption bodies. If rent-seeking stems from moral hazard between politicians and bureaucrats, all governments should create anticorruption bodies. We offer an explanation for why unaccountable governments vary in their willingness to create anticorruption institutions. Autocrats create such bodies to deter ideologically disaffected members of the populace from entering the bureaucracy. Anticorruption institutions act as a commitment by the elite to restrict the monetary benefits from bureaucratic office, thus ensuring that only zealous supporters of the elite will pursue bureaucratic posts. We illustrate these arguments with case studies of South Korea and Rwanda. (JEL D73, P48)The literature on corruption, broadly speaking, points to two agency problems as the source of corrupt behavior. One such problem exists between the populace and its political leaders. A lack of government accountability gives rise to politicians' predatory behavior (e.g., Adersaè t al. 2003). Political institutions, such as democracy, may serve as a check on these predatory tendencies. Alternative arguments point to an agency problem between governments and their bureaucrats as a source of corruption. The state's lack of policing capabilities may allow bureaucrats to predate on the population, regardless of the intentions of political leaders (e.g., Shleifer and Vishny 1993).http://jleo.oxfordjournals.org/ Downloaded from 12. Of course, in reality potential recruits may be characterized by factors other than their ideology-notably by their level of competence. We see no reason to expect that competence is systematically correlated with ideological support, and abstract from any consideration of potential recruits' competence in the model.

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Section: Argumentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Corruption and Ideology in Autocracies: Figure 1.

Hollyer

Wantchékon

2014

J Law Econ Organ

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“…These elites were patrimonial in two ways. First, they were members of networks of affinity that had initially developed to protect officials from the vagaries of the planned economy (Urban, 1985), but which had subsequently developed into parasitic machines for the private accumulation of wealth and influence (Jowitt, 1983). Second, their relationship to society at large was patrimonial since Soviet communism had been a patrimonial system in which rapid modernization from a peasant economic base had served to create structures for co-option of new social groups (as a neo-patrimonial system the USSR tended towards the top left of the space defined in Fig.…”

Section: Patrimonial Capitalism and Its Development In The Former Ussrmentioning

confidence: 99%

Economic and Political Hybridity: Patrimonial Capitalism in the Post-Soviet Sphere

Robinson

2013

Journal of Eurasian Studies

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Hybridity in non-democratic states can be economic as well as political. Economic hybridity is produced by the same kind of pressures that create political hybridity, but the relationship between economic and political hybridity has not been as much studied by political scientists. This article uses the concept of patrimonial capitalism to look at economic hybridity, its stability and relationship to political hybridity. Using examples from Russia and other former Soviet states it argues that economic hybridity is unstable and that it has a potentially negative affect on political stability generally.

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“…In this respect the 'Catch 22' present in these speeches does not constitute a double bind as such, but rather presents us with the paradoxical communication which is characteristic of, and necessary to, a double bind. As Urban has pointed out, 31 a double bind to be complete requires not only paradoxical communication of this sort and the elimination of meta-communication, but also requires the very real threat of force and a relationship of active dependency between the super-and subordinate parties, to lock it into place.…”

Section: The Re-entry Of Historymentioning

confidence: 99%

Marxism–Leninism as Discourse: The Politics of the Empty Signifier and the Double Bind

Walker¹

1989

Brit. J. Polit. Sci

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This article employs a semiotic approach to investigate the meaning of ‘Marxism-Leninism’ with a view to clarifying our understanding of this term. Contrary to conventional interpretations it demonstrates that ‘Marxism-Leninism’ is an empty signifier which is subject to definition on a contemporary basis by the CPSU itself. However, it also demonstrates that ‘Marxism-Leninism’ is the central element in a mechanism of control which bears all the hallmarks of a classic linguistic double bind. It therefore concludes that while ‘Marxism-Leninism’ is referentially open to re-definition it is connotatively attached to the practices of the CPSU. It is both fixed and not fixed in meaning.The resulting analysis leads to a critique of terms which are conventionally taken for granted by Sovietologists and introduces a new methodological approach to the study of ‘Marxism-Leninism’.

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Conceptualizing political power in the USSR: Patterns of binding and bonding

Cited by 16 publications

References 67 publications

Corruption and Ideology in Autocracies: Figure 1.

Corruption and Ideology in Autocracies: Figure 1.

Economic and Political Hybridity: Patrimonial Capitalism in the Post-Soviet Sphere

Marxism–Leninism as Discourse: The Politics of the Empty Signifier and the Double Bind

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