Capital, Coercion, and Postcommunist States. By Gerald M. Easter. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2012. 248p. $75.00 cloth, $26.95 paper.

Extract

Taxation in postcommunist states is at least doubly peculiar: States must learn to tax wealth in private hands that barely existed previously, and societies must learn to relate to tax institutions that barely existed previously. Gerald Easter has provided a comprehensively researched and grippingly written account of how these twin tests were met in Poland and Russia. To summarize the argument of this book, Polish state actors encountered a private sector of petty capitalists and workers, and their interaction struck a consensual bargain over tax powers, citizen obligations, and the nature of public benefits in a “contractual state.” By contrast, the Russian economy was dominated by large-scale extractive industries available only through elite bargains imposed with coercive authority in a “predatory state.” The contrast serves to demonstrate the gradual accretion of political struggles and institutional forms, diverse varieties of tax regimes, and the contribution to our understanding of state—society relations made by the postcommunist experience, where “the flow of power ran from state to society, rather than in the opposite direction” (p. 187).