In this PERG seminar, Sanja Hajdinjak will present her chapter "Co-evolution of Bureaucratic Veto Points and Party Colonization: Resource Use and Rent Grabbing in Tourism Sector of Croatia and Montenegro."
Abstract
The chapter maps out co-evolutionary development of the Bureaucratic Veto Points and Political Competition in two countries specializing in tourism sector, Croatia and Montenegro. I compare two cases across four periods: socialism in Yugoslavia, transition during the Yugoslav wars (1991-2000), tourism boom of the 2000s (2000-2010) and the post-crisis period (2011-onwards). The focus is on the sequencing of the Bureaucratic Veto Points (BVPs) and Political Competition and the effects on the rent grabbing and on the resource use. The BVPs include 1) complexity of procedures governing the process of spatial planning, 2) spatial planning organization and 3) planning expertise. Party Competition refers to national level politics and probability of staying in power. The contribution to the literature is two-fold. First, contrary to the dominant literature which suggests that less regulation is better for control of corruption and for development, I suggest a nuanced argument that complex procedures, stringent legislation and decentralized spatial planning act as veto points and help prevent rent grabbing. Second, the chapter also adds to the ongoing theoretical debate on the relationship between state capacity and development, by suggesting the co-evolutionary relationship between political survival and bureaucratic competence. Methodologically the chapter is designed as comparative analysis of the two most similar cases. Data largely originates from primary sources such as semi-structured interviews, statistical records, legislative texts and spatial plans.
Professor Marko Godart Prelec will serve as a discussant.