(no subject)
'The most modern contemporary bureaucracies were those established by authoritarian states in their pursuit of national security. This was true of ancient China ... and it was also true of the preeminent example of the bureaucratic rule, Prussia (later to become the unifier of Germany). ... On the other hand, countries that democratized early before they established modern administration found themselves developing clientelistic public sectors [corrupt civil service like in Italy and Greece] . Those countries in which democracy preceded modern state-building have had much greater problem achieving high quality governments than those who inherited modern states from absolutist times." All this according to Francis Fukuyama, and it seems to make perfect sense to me. In other words, you have to have a state machinery that works before you can have democracy. Democracy is no cure to failed states.[Magdi Abdelhadi [FB]]