Publication

Rationalizing or Empowering Bureaucrats? Tax Administration Reform in Post-Communist Poland and Russia

Published on 1 January 2008

Polish efforts at administrative reform within the tax service have focused on rationalizing the function and duties of tax officials in a Weberian sense. In contrast, Russia’s tax bureaucracies lean towards securing their own ‘power’ over society through their tax collection mechanisms.

Polish reforms have sought to rationalize the tax bureaucracy by focusing on institutional design as well as by reducing the ability of bureaucrats to function with undue discretion. Meanwhile, in Russia, the implementation of reforms designed to make the tax administration more ‘rational’ in a Weberian sense often fails to shift the course of the state’s goal to seek power for itself, especially at the expense of society at large. Comparison of the experiences of these two countries suggests that ’empowering’ bureaucrats so that the state will be ‘strengthened’ vis-à-vis society may not provide for as successful an implementation of state policy in the long run as an approach based upon ‘rationalizing’ the state.

Publication details

published by
Routledge
authors
Berenson, M.P.
editors
Oleinik, A.

Share

About this publication

Related content

Working Paper

The Politics of Social Assistance in Lebanon: Social Protection, Sectarianism, and Lebanon’s Fragmented Social Contract

BASIC Research Working Paper 32

5 February 2025

Brief

The Politics of Social Assistance in Lebanon

BASIC Research Policy Briefing 5

5 February 2025