Prior to 1989, the communist countries of Eastern Europe and the USSR lacked genuine employer and industry associations. After the collapse of communism, industry associations mushroomed throughout the region. Duvanova argues that abusive regulatory regimes discourage the formation of business associations and 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 by industry associations and their benign influence on patterns of public governance. Careful analysis of cross-national quantitative data spanning more than 25 countries, and qualitative examination 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. These arguments and empirical findings put the long-standing issues of economic regulations, public goods and collective action in a new theoretical perspective.
• Addresses a largely overlooked but highly consequential area of postcommunist political economy: formally organized special interest groups representing different economic sectors; one of the first works that addresses this topic from a cross-national and cross-industry perspective • Offers a new perspective on special interest organization: documents the benign effects of business organizations in structuring the markets, promoting regulatory reforms and countervailing bureaucratic corruption • Champions the multi-method research strategy: theoretical arguments are tested against multiple types of data, and the qualitative and quantitative comparative analyses are mutually informing
Contents
1. Introduction; 2. Collective action in adverse business environments; 3. Postcommunist business representation in a comparative perspective; 4. Business environment and business organization: the quantitative approach; 5. What you do is what you are: business associations in action; 6. Compulsory vs. voluntary membership; 7. Conclusions.
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