This is a book about how processes of political representation work, whom they represent, and how they develop over time. We think of these as processes in which interests are formed, given a voice within organizations and polities, and influence the decisions of governments. As such, these processes are at the heart of how democracies are organized and governed. As Suzanne Berger has observed, “political representation involves both the organizations that link citizens to government and the political ideas and programs that structure how the world works.” Few processes are more important to the operation of democracy. Democratic governance is a system in which choices are made and compromises forged among competing interests, and the quality of a democracy is determined, in large measure, by how well the views of the people are represented by its governing institutions.

Appropriately, therefore, the study of representation has always been central to political science. How best to accomplish it has been a core question for theorists of democracy since the eighteenth-century debates of Edmund Burke and the authors of The Federalist Papers up to those that join contemporary analysts, such as Robert Dahl (1972), Bernard Manin (1977), and Pierre Rosanvallon (2011). This has never been an easy question to resolve because even the most democratic governments are imperfect mirrors for the views of the people (Pitkin 1984). Of more concern to us, however, are debates among empirical analysts of politics about how existing processes of representation work. How are interests formed? How do they acquire influence, and how are conflicts among them resolved?

In spite of the growing sophistication of the principal-agent (PA) literature, it still contains a remarkably thin view of agent behavior. That is, PA theorists have made surprisingly few direct claims about agents. Almost twenty years after it was written, Williamson's (1985: 30) pithy formulation – that agents are “self-interest seeking with guile” – remains the classic statement, and most current formulations do not go far beyond it. Mainly, the field has focused on what principals can do to control such agents. These controls – including detailed rules, screening and selection, monitoring and reporting requirements, institutional checks, and sanctions, as detailed in the Introduction – give us an indirect picture of agents as seen through the eyes of principals. While the indirect picture reinforces Williamson's original notion of potentially troublesome agents, it also suggests that principals have many tools to control these agents.

Scholars have paid less attention to the strategies that agents use to try to circumvent these controls. Agents often do more than just attempt to hide their information and their actions, as discussed in the Introduction. In fact, as we discuss below, some agent strategies are not very hidden at all. Other strategies are indeed hidden, but agents use different methods to cover their tracks. Though scholars have made great efforts to articulate and describe a range of principal control strategies, as summarized in the Introduction, a parallel effort needs to be made to understand agent strategies.

Does NATO have a future? Should it? That depends in large measure on what one thinks NATO is all about, especially now that it is no longer about defending the Fulda Gap. Some observers see the Alliance as a military “tool kit” for the United States. Others regard it as a political organization on which the United States can rely – or at least should be able to rely – for official support when it undertakes controversial missions abroad. Doubtless these are important functions, but NATO serves other purposes as well, or at least it ought to. Among these other purposes is the provision of a military framework for mutual defense against external aggressors and, at least since the 1990s, for united efforts to punish rogue leaders or bring peace to war-torn regions. These are valuable collective resources and ones that would be difficult to replace – or to rebuild.

NATO is not a “coalition of the willing”; it is an alliance. It is a military club, and the members of that club have certain military obligations toward one another. During the run-up to the Iraq War, the government of the United States made a considered judgment to downgrade those obligations – to trade away pressure on the newer NATO members to upgrade their military capabilities and competences – in exchange for displays of political loyalty to Washington in the United Nations and elsewhere.

Introduction: Can Semisovereignty be Transferred?

Peter Katzenstein's analysis of the ‘semisovereign’ West German state is one of the most enduringly popular conceptualisations of German politics. This chapter asks whether Germans could transfer this widely admired model of policy-making to the new states in eastern Germany. The chapter frames German unification around the idea of ‘institutional transfer’, an idea explored more fully in the next section. The point of departure is the progressive crisis of the state socialist model in the German Democratic Republic (GDR), followed by the collapse of the GDR state, and the widespread hope among eastern Germans that their territories might not merely join the Federal Republic but also be remade in its image (McAdams 1993; Maier 1997; Hampton and Soe 1999).

It would be unrealistic to ask of a model that highlights incremental change to explain the most rapid period of institutional and policy change in the post-war period. In that sense, the question here is not so much whether the semisovereignty model predicts or explains the main contours of unification, but rather whether the political features it highlighted – including incrementalism, political bargaining and societal engagement – survived the move to the east. This is no easy question, for there is no one answer valid across all policy domains. Clearly, institutional transfer has resulted in many similarities between the political economies of western and eastern Germany. The question, however, is whether these similarities are more than ‘skin deep’.

Chapters 2—5 described the variety of forms of emulation that have appeared in CEE over the past fifteen years. They traced the way various configurations of IO incentives and domestic considerations shaped elite use of four modes of emulation. The same chapters also explained the importance of the density of IO rules and the density of policy sector actors for four different kinds of outcomes of emulation. This chapter and the next connect that description to broader theoretical debates. This chapter assesses the cases in light of individual institutional theories. It does so by trying to sidestep the “metatheoretical debate” noted in the epigraph and noting the places where the three theory traditions are most helpful and where the lacunae in each lie. It begins with the NATO cases just explored and then returns to the EU cases discussed in chapters 2 and 3. Chapter 7 then employs limited syntheses of the three bodies of theory to mine the data for more insights about the overall postcommunist transformation.

DEFENSE REFORMS IN LIGHT OF THE THREE THEORY TRADITIONS

Defense reform went through the same phases in each state. In a nutshell, the defense sector began the postcommunist period moribund and discredited in both states.

In 1989–90, the communist regimes of Eastern Europe fell. In a few countries, social movements had challenged and eroded communism; in other places, the regimes seemed to collapse of their own weight. In either case, however, the notion of becoming a normal European state was an idea whose time had come. Almost all the new governments that emerged looked to distance themselves from many communist-era practices and institutions. Elites and citizens generally thought of these changes as part of a “return to Europe.” Even those who argued that one could not “return” to a place (Europe) that one had never left still acknowledged the need for radical changes. Within a few years, elites and citizens also came to a broad consensus that their states should aspire to join the European Union (EU) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and many subsequent institutional changes were pursued with these goals in mind.

This book analyzes Central and Eastern European (CEE) states' efforts to return to Europe by trying to become members of the EU and NATO. Unlike available accounts of the “dual enlargement,” it pays particular attention to the proclivity of CEE elites to emulate existing institutions from Western Europe.