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The natures of U-form and M-form governance and their effects impart varying legacies after a hierarchy collapses. Organizational forms generate different types of political institutions and downstream effects. After the original hierarchy collapses, peripheral U-form sectors will become institutional fragments, with no clear organizational ties to the new core; M-form sectors will tend to persist relatively intact (fig. .) as part of a new, independent state.1 This endogenous logic of organizational forms and posthierarchical collapse constitutes the theoretical basis for assessing the various modes of state-building in the postindependence era. The first part of this chapter presents the organizational logic of the divergent posthierarchical paths of M-forms and U-forms and offers testable predictions about these legacies. The next section applies these arguments to the political settings of collapsed states and postimperial spaces and contrasts the predictions of the firm-type model about                                                             . While this chapter examines the legacies of these organizational forms after their collapse, one could also examine the propensity of each of these forms to disintegrate in the first place. For example, arguments about the instability of socialist ethnofederal arrangements often highlight how “M-form” type governance created institutional assets that were then used by regional elites and independence-seeking movements against the center. See especially, Rogers Brubaker, “Nationhood and the National Question in the Soviet Union and Post-Soviet Eurasia,” Theory and Society  (): –; and Yuri Slezkine, “The USSR as Communal Apartment, or How a Socialist State Promoted Ethnic Particularism,” Slavic Review  (): –; and Philip Roeder, “Soviet Federalism and Ethnic Mobilization,” World Politics  (): –. While such a discussion lies outside the parameters of this study, I examine varying modes of disintegration and hierarchical collapse later in this chapter and in the case of Yugoslavia in chapter . posthierarchical political development with ideational alternatives, notably theories of postimperial nationalism and postcolonialism. Last I revisit the sectoral cases (Central Asian defense, internal security, industry and agriculture) presented in the chapter  and show how M-form and U-form legacies have exerted varying effects on the state-building and consolidation of the independent post-Soviet Central Asian states. H C  P  E After peripheries disengage from their former core, their extrication pathways will depend largely on whether a state sector or agency was previously organized as a U-form or an M-form in the hierarchy era. Hierarchical Collapse and U-form Trajectories In peripheral sectors previously governed as U-forms, their functional integration makes them dependent on a set of vertical relations and governance structures that are no longer present. After operating for a larger structure or for scale economies, U-forms will become organizational fragments of a governance structure that has contracted dramatically in scale and scope. Thus, a new state will lack the organizational capacity to support or govern that function. Second, given that U-forms were highly integrated into the core state but lacked horizontal ties to the     Former U-form Former M-form Former M-form Former U-form Former Imperial Core Former Core’s Ministries Post-Imperial State’s Central Bureaucracies Former Core’s Ministries Function A Function B Function C Function D FIGURE . Organizational Legacies of U-form and M-form Governed Sectors periphery, once there is a hierarchical collapse they will lack a peripheral political constituency or support base within the bureaucracy of the nascent state. Unless the U-form can be revived or reconstituted by an external third party or other exogenous support mechanism, it will wither away or be reconfigured in the newly independent state. Of course, U-forms contained within the former core should not experience the same degree of disruption given that they will maintain the same overall organizational structure and functional divisions. Finally, complete disengagement by a core from a former periphery might prove especially difficult if the peripheral U-form involves relationally specific assets—idiosyncratic, frequently used assets that lack readily available market substitutes.2 In this case, their continued use or operation will be highly valued by these core functional divisions. The work of Oliver Williamson suggests a number of mixed governance forms that lie between market and hierarchy that might govern relationally specific assets, such as binding arbitration, reciprocity agreements , or joint-use agreements.3 By disaggregating and dividing the property rights of these residual assets through mixed-governance arrangements, the former core and periphery can reconfigure the core’s use of these assets without formally reconstituting the previous hierarchical order.4 Consequently, the presence of U-form “fragments” presents acute...

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