Building a Trustworthy State in Post-Socialist Transition by János Kornai; Susan Rose-AckermanReview by: Mitchell OrensteinSlavic Review, Vol. 66, No. 2 (Summer, 2007), pp. 325-326Published by:Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20060237 .

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Book Reviews 325

subsequent era, including World War II, communism, and postcommunist democratiza

tion (where the authors perceive a crisis of masculinity).

Mazierska and Ostrowska present a cogent overview of Polish filmmaking, including a shift from socialist realism to the individualized visions of the Polish School. Ostrowska

is persuasive in differentiating the work of Andrzej Wajda from that of the more ironic

Andrzej Munk, and in crediting Wajda's Czlowiekz marmuru (Man of marble, 1977) for ini

tiating the trend to revise Stalinism. She sees fruitful connections among disparate films in

terms of female representation, from the Polish Mother to the Superwoman. Mazierska offers a

fascinating account of how the script o? Man of Marble evolved into

a film that essentially belongs to the actress Krystyna Janda (termed "the greatest star of

Polish postwar cinema," 6). She is quite right to claim that women's portrayals are not ide

ologically neutral: her analysis of the disempowered "bitches and witches" of 1990s cinema

is downright frightening in its description of misogyny. And Ostrowska's chapter on

Jewish

women?doubly "other" in Poland?is intriguing, especially her close reading of Wajda's Ziemia obiecana (Promised land, 1975). (Ostrowska is apparently working from the original version, as

opposed to the director's cut of 2000. And the reference to the "cab" ride taken

by Karol and Lucy should be "carriage.") The final chapters

are devoted to four renowned Polish female filmmakers, including Barbara Sass. The portrait of Wanda Jakubowska, the longest-working director, is bal

anced: Mazierska acknowledges the problem of her being a Stalinist, a propagandist, "an

unreformed Communist" (159), as well as the impact of her masterpiece Ostatni etap (The last stage, 1948), and her significant contribution to children's cinema. Although her stu

dents are mentioned, Mazierska neglects to include that?as a professor at the Lodz Film

School?she was a mentor to Krzysztof Kieslowski. (Indeed, the Dekalog [Decalogue, 1989] is noticeable in its absence, considering the variety of Kieslowski's female characters?who

are perhaps

more complex than the types delineated in this study.)

Agnieszka Holland is lauded for her "ideological distrust and skepticism" (202), and

her d?mystification of the myth of the Polish Mother in a film like Kobieta samotna (A woman alone, 1981). Ostrowska provides

an excellent description of the de-eroticized

"sex" scene that distinguishes Holland's treatment from that of traditional male directors.

The last chapter explores Dorota Kedzierzawska, the gifted director of such darkly poetic dramas as Wrony (Crows, 1994), with attention to her unique formal ruptures.

Even though the eleven chapters are written by three different authors, the tone is co

herent. A recurring subject is abortion: Mazierska suggests that Czlowiek z zelaza (Man of

iron, 1981) reflects Solidarity's attitude toward women, which included an anti-abortion

stance. For an American reader, it is striking that whereas abortion was available to Polish women under communism, it was rendered illegal in 1993. Ostrowska later points out that

Kedzierzawska's film Nie (Nothing, 1998) made her the first director in postcommunist Po

land to refer to this issue.

Women in Polish Cinema is well researched and elegantly written (despite the occasional

missing comma or awkward construction). It should be of great interest to scholars inter

ested in both Polish cinema criticism and feminist studies.

Annette Insdorf

Columbia University

Building a

Trustworthy State in Post-Socialist Transition. Ed. J?nos Kornai and Susan Rose

Ackerman. Political Evolution and Institutional Change. New York: Palgrave MacMil

lan, 2004. xvii, 232 pages. Notes. Index. Figures. Tables. $65.00, hard bound.

This interesting group of collected essays shows how some of the leading minds in con

temporary social science grapple with issues of corruption and its antidotes in central and eastern Europe. Corruption is widely perceived to be a

significant problem in the region?

harming governmental and economic performance by enabling the sale of public deci

sions and causing the state to be captured by rapacious interest groups. As usual with

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326 Slavic Review

edited volumes, the essays are of variable quality, but the best among them are truly bril

liant and worthwhile, even uplifting, as in the case of Bruce Ackerman's paean to commit

ted democratic citizens. The best essays may become classics in the field. Some essays are

more theoretical in approach, such as Claus Offe's brilliant attempt to clarify the defini

tion of corruption, Cynthia M. Home and Margaret Levi's essay on lustration, Andr?s

Saj?'s on neutral institutions, or the concluding essays by Russell Hardin, John Mueller,

and Bruce Ackerman that debate the significance of corruption for democracy. Others are

strongly empirical, such as the excellent essay by Joel S. Hellman and Daniel Kaufmann

explaining survey results on corruption in Russia; Irina Slinko, Evgeny Yakovlev, and Eka

terina Zhuravskaya's essay on state capture; Alexandra Vacroux's on pharmaceutical regu

lation; and Ivan Krastev and Georgy Ganev's essay on the political determinants of anti

corruption campaigns. Susan Rose-Ackerman's introduction usefully summarizes the

findings of her recent Cambridge University Press book on ways to improve democratic

governance through mechanisms of accountability and gives shape to the debates consid

ered here.

Among its many contributions, this volume helps to create analytic clarity on the defi

nition of corruption. Offe's original essay on this topic is impressive and should become a

standard text on this issue. Other essays complement this discussion. The volume also pro vides several empirical analyses of corruption in postsocialist transitions but is less com

prehensive in this respect. Several essays provide voluminous empirical information on

Russia, but no serious cross-regional comparison is undertaken and only patchy empirical work is presented

on most countries and topic areas. An interesting theoretical debate on

the implications of corruption for democracy rounds out this volume with the participants

taking more

cynical (Hardin, Mueller) and more idealistic (Ackerman) views on the sub

ject. Krastev and Ganev's essay is unique in inviting consideration of why fighting corrup tion has become an obsession in the west and why political leaders in central and eastern

Europe have often rejected such campaigns. Their answer, in short, is that anti-corruption

campaigns do not help democratic politicians win election as much as one might expect.

Essays in this volume offer essentially three solutions to the problems of corruption in

central and eastern Europe: reduce incentives to engage in corrupt activity (Hellman and

Kaufmann) ; change corrupt values (Offe, Ackerman) ; use democratic politics to inject ac

countability and thus prevent corrupt behavior (Rose-Ackerman). None of the essays give

great hope that the goal of a clean, transparent government will be easily achieved, given that corruption is institutionalized in business practices, rooted in societal values, and may

not be effectively prevented by democratic political means.

There are also some questions about exactly why corruption matters. An underlying

source of concern about corruption has been its impact on economic growth. Yet the dra

matic economic growth of these countries in recent years seems to undermine this link.

Russia's growth appears to be closely connected to the price of oil. In central and eastern

Europe, no amount of odd, questionable, and simply bad government appears to hold

back the economic process connected to integration with the west. Why does corruption matter? Purely because of its impact

on democracy? Or because of a broader impact on

political and economic development? Does corruption have a major impact on democ

racy? On the business environment? On economic growth? Or is it just a symptom of high

growth, high-volatility economies in transition?

For those who believe there is reason to be concerned about corruption in transition

economies, this volume addresses the issue from a number of standpoints, provides rich

theoretical and some solid empirical work on the topic, and discusses important moral and

governance issues. It should be important to students of government, law, and sociology of transition and those concerned with issues of corruption and accountability worldwide.

Readers may be interested in the more theoretical or more empirical essays and will have

to pick and choose the ones that have the greatest resonance with their own ideas and

approaches.

Mitchell Orenstein

Syracuse University

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