Under what conditions do external actors succeed in remaking weak states in new democracies? And when do they fail? Scholars of comparative politics have studied state-building mainly as a domestic phenomenon and in the few accounts where outside pressure has been considered a plausible cause, its effects have been viewed as unintended ones. However, since the end of the Cold War, external actors have intervened more and more in state-building processes and, in particular, intergovernmental organizations (IGO) have increasingly embarked on deliberate attempts to remake weak states. In order to understand the role of outsiders in the process of state-building, this paper resorts to a structured, focused comparison of civil service reform in Croatia and Serbia from democratic transition to the present day. From the end of World War II to the late 1990s the two countries experienced authoritarian rule and showed low levels of bureaucratic competence. At the turn of the 2000s they transitioned to democracy and, strongly urged by the European Union, the World Bank and other IGO, they announced ambitious reforms of the civil service. Contrary to what the literature on policy diffusion would expect on the basis of their level of economic development and degree of international integration, Croatia has progressed significantly less than Serbia. How was that possible? Why did outsiders succeed less in Croatia than in Serbia? On the basis of official documents and semi-structured interviews with key informants, I argue that such a variation is explained by the presence of the former single party in the post-authoritarian governments and the degree of party cohesion of those governments. If, as in Croatia, the former single party comes back to government and plays a dominant role in the government coalitions, the government becomes a veto player that is both willing and able to resist external pressures aimed at increasing bureaucratic competence. If, as in Serbia, the above conditions do not hold, the government has both less interest and capacity to defy outside influence and dismantle the inherited patronage networks
