Zoltán GÁL, Centre for Economic & Regional Studies, Hungary, Hungary
Szilárd RÁCZ, Centre for Economic & Regional Studies, Hungary, Hungary
Economic bordering within the EU involves the investigation of the geo-economic relationships that have emerged as a result of global market re-integration and EU membership of post-socialist states during the economic transition of CEE. We apply a geoeconomics perspective assessing the role of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in the transformation as external capital dependency one of the principal bordering patterns. Historical context with the introduction of post-colonial perspective relevant to position of CEE states within the EU. We argue, that concepts of core-periphery relations in the form of postcolonial dependency regimes continue to be relevant for interpreting the development of post-socialist states whose geo-economic positionality within the EU can be characterized as one of semiperipheral & intermediate (post)coloniality.
Our method involves a reconstruction of FDI and financialized credit-debt impacts on CEE economies in terms of growth and convergence. At the same time, we will discuss different core-periphery ideas in terms of their suitability for interpreting the geoeconomic context. We evaluate the role of foreign capital, and the FDI model in particular, in conditioning geo-economic relations and exacerbating the vulnerability of CEE economies. External capital dependency in postcolonial dependency regimes poses long-term disadvantages for the accumulation of financial, human, and even social capital a problem that can be considered a historical weakness of CEE, especially after periodic “transformation crisis” caused by frequent regime changes and the accompanying transformation losses. The limitations of our approach are given by the fact that we analyze CEE as part of a generalized heuristic of core-periphery relations in order to highlight the role of foreign economic influence and investment in CEE. However, we suggest that these limitations are offset by our general conclusions regarding geoeconomic dependencies within the EU.
Mots clés : Geoeconomics|capital dependency|post-coloniality|CEE|FDI
A103456ZG