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Building Democracy in the Yugoslav Successor States. Accomplishments, Setbacks, Challenges since 1990

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building, ownership of sales channels and financial management. Increased value-added capture is necessary, as Bal azs Szent-Iv anyi suggests in Chapter 11, if the CEE countries want to achieve not… Click to show full abstract

building, ownership of sales channels and financial management. Increased value-added capture is necessary, as Bal azs Szent-Iv anyi suggests in Chapter 11, if the CEE countries want to achieve not only modernisation and greater development, but ultimately convergence with the developed world. To facilitate this, governments will need to increase investment in education and adopt policies to create an ecosystem supportive of private enterprise, with low entry requirements, cheap and plentiful funding, and expert assistance for the arduous process of internationalisation. That this is not an easy path to follow is shown perhaps most clearly by the case of Hungary, which has had the highest stock of inward FDI to GDP in the region (81.7% in 2012) but has also turned to policies that encourage state capitalism, national champions and (re)-nationalisations. Moreover, the development of appropriate understandings of dynamic global markets among decision-makers in the region remains a work in progress. At a technical and institutional level, we get a glimpse of the level of effort invested in attracting FDI in two chapters that deploy qualitative methodologies to describe and compare the approaches of the Visegr ad 4 countries (Chapter 9, by Agnes T}or€os, Ad am M esz aros and Akos Dani) and Bulgaria and Romania (Chapter 10, by Sorin Gabriel Anton). While some countries—most notably the Czech Republic—have developed stable and effective agencies featuring state-of-the-art promotion activities, others (for instance, Romania) suffer from chronic institutional instability or, as in the case of Poland or Slovakia, of a surprisingly casual attitude to the needs of foreign investors for relevant information. State funding available for investment assistance is largely set within the EU framework, and other factors, such as the general business environment and taxation, are also key in attracting foreign investors. However, even in their limited role as intermediaries, the perceived effectiveness of FDI promotion agencies is important: it influences the global rankings of countries in terms of ease of doing business and has been shown to correlate with actual levels of FDI. Students of FDI will no doubt want to dig deeper into the data sets and statistical and qualitative methodologies employed here, to spell out further implications or to evaluate the robustness of the relationships between variables as new information becomes available. For readers interested in CEE and the EU, this book can also provide valuable insights. The new trends it documents and analyses have not been reflected so far in appropriate policy responses. In this respect the volume provides policymakers with practical evidence and policy suggestions they would do well to consider and act upon.

Keywords: states accomplishments; building democracy; successor states; yugoslav successor; democracy yugoslav; accomplishments setbacks

Journal Title: Europe-Asia Studies
Year Published: 2018

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