Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

East Central Europe in the European Union

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
The Palgrave Handbook of Critical International Political Economy

Part of the book series: Palgrave Handbooks in IPE ((PHIPE))

Abstract

More than a decade ago, the European Union (EU) embarked on the most ambitious enlargement in its history. Since 2004, it has admitted 13 new EU member states, 11 of them from East Central Europe. EU accession held the promise of prosperity and democracy for a region which, located on Europe’s periphery, has historically been plagued by poor living standards, political instability and different brands of authoritarian regimes. And indeed, while the road to the EU’s eastern enlargement was anything but smooth, the benefits of membership have initially lived up to expectations. EU accession triggered a major inflow of foreign direct investment (FDI) and public funds, and after a decade of recession and crisis, growth took off in the region. While there were some worries about democratic “backsliding” in the immediate aftermath of accession, overall there was a sense that the East Central European countries had managed the “double transition” (Offe 1991) to capitalism and democracy quite well, not least due to the EU’s accession conditionality and membership.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 189.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Hardcover Book
USD 249.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    Neo-Gramscian IPE, similar to regulation theory, is not a coherent theoretical approach, but combines different strands of thoughts. As these approaches are treated elsewhere in the volume in depth (Chap. 9 by van Apeldoorn), I will only briefly introduce the major concepts on which I draw for my empirical analysis.

  2. 2.

    For the concept of variegated capitalism, see e.g. Jessop 2014.

  3. 3.

    In the following I will only concentrate on two major accumulation regimes that have emerged in the East. Space prevents me from discussing the third—less dependent—Slovene model, as well as those of the late comers Bulgaria and Romania. For a more complete overview see Becker and Jäger 2012, Bohle and Greskovits 2012, and Myant and Drahokoupil 2011.

  4. 4.

    It is telling that Valdis Dombrovskis, Latvia’s Prime Minister from 2009 to 2014, who inflicted one of the harshest austerity programs in the EU on the population of the tiny Baltic state became EU commissioner and vice-president responsible for “Euro and Social Dialogue” (sic!) in the 2014–2019 Juncker Commission.

  5. 5.

    An excellent example of the ideology of austerity nationalism is Aslund and Dombrovskis 2011.

References

  • Aglietta, M. (2000). A theory of capitalist regulation: The US experience. London: Verso.

    Google Scholar 

  • Aslund, A. (2010). The last shall be the first: The East European financial crisis (1st edn). Washington, DC: Peterson Institute.

    Google Scholar 

  • Aslund, A., & Dombrovskis, V. (2011). How Latvia came through the financial crisis (Vol. 17). Washington, DC: Peterson Institute.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bandelj, N. (2008). From communists to foreign capitalists: The social foundations of foreign direct investment in postsocialist Europe. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Becker, J., & Jäger, J. (2012). Integration in crisis: A regulationist perspective on the interaction of European varieties of capitalism. Competition & Change, 16(3), 169–187.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bieler, A. (2002). Globalisation and enlargement of the European Union: Austrian and Swedish social forces in the struggle over membership. London/New York Routledge

    Google Scholar 

  • Bieling, H.-J. (2003). Social forces in the making of the new European economy: The case of financial market integration. New Political Economy, 8(2), 203–224.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bieling, H.-J. (2013). European financial capitalism and the politics of (de-) financialization. Competition & Change, 17(3), 283–298.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bieling, H.-J. (2014). Comparative analysis of capitalism from a regulationist perspective extended by neo-Gramscian IPE. Capital & Class, 38(1), 31–43.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bohle, D. (2006). Neoliberal hegemony, transnational capital and the terms of the EU’s eastward expansion. Capital & Class, 30(1), 57–86.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bohle, D. (2008). Race to the bottom? Transnational companies and reinforced competition in the enlarged European Union. In B. Van Apeldoorn, L. Horn, & J. Drahokoupil (Eds.), Contradictions and limits of neoliberal governance: From Lisbon to Lisbon.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bohle, D. (2014). Post-socialist housing meets transnational finance: Foreign banks, mortgage lending, and the privatization of welfare in Hungary and Estonia. Review of International Political Economy, 21(4), 913–948.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bohle, D., & Greskovits, B. (2012). Capitalist diversity on Europe’s periphery. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Boyer, R. (2000). Is a finance-led growth regime a viable alternative to Fordism? A preliminary analysis. Economy and Society, 29(1), 111–145.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bruszt, L., & Vukov, V. (2014). European integration and the evolution of state capacities in the southern and eastern peripheries of Europe. Manuscript.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cafruny, A. W., & Ryner, M. (2007). Europe at bay: In the shadow of US hegemony. Boulder: Lynne Rienner.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cafruny, A. W., & Schwartz, H. M. (Eds.). (2013). Exploring the global financial crisis. Boulder/London: Lynne Rienner Publishers.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cafruny, A. W., & Talani, L. S. (2013). The crisis of the eurozone. In A. W. Cafruny & H. M. Schwartz (Eds.), Exploring the global financial crisis. Boulder/London: Lynne Rienner Publishers.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dellepiane, S., Hardiman, N., & Las Heras, J. (2013). Building on easy money: The political economy of housing bubbles in Ireland and Spain. http://irserver.ucd.ie/handle/10197/4929

  • Drahokoupil, J. (2008). Globalisation and the state in Central and Eastern Europe: The politics of foreign direct investment. London\New York. Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • EBRD. (2013). Transition report 2013: Stuck in transition? London: European Bank of Reconstruction and Development.

    Google Scholar 

  • Égert, B., & Mihaljek, D. (2007). Determinants of house prices in Central and Eastern Europe. Comparative Economic Studies, 49(3), 367–388.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Epstein, R. A. (2014). Overcoming ‘economic backwardness’ in the European Union. JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies, 52(1), 17–34.

    Google Scholar 

  • European Commission. (1999). Implementing the framework for financial markets: Action plan, COM/99/0232 final, quoted after: http://europa.eu/legislation_summaries/internal_market/single_market_services/financial_services_general_framework/l24210_en.htm. Accessed 1 Apr 2015.

  • European Council. (2000, March). Lisbon European Council presidency conclusions, available at http://www.europarl.europa.eu/summits/lis1_en.htm. Accessed 11 Apr 2015.

  • Eyal, G., Townsley, E., & Szelenyi, E. (1998). Making capitalism without capitalists: The new ruling elites in Eastern Europe. London: Verso.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gill, S. (1998). European governance and new constitutionalism: Economic and Monetary Union and alternatives to disciplinary neoliberalism in Europe. New Political Economy, 3(1), 5–26.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Grabbe, H. (2006). The EU’s transformative power: Europeanization through conditionality in Central and Eastern Europe. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Gramsci, A. (1971). Selections from the prison notebooks (Ed. and trans: Hoare, Q. & Smith, G. N. In Q. Hoare & G. N. Smith (Eds.). New York: International, 62.

    Google Scholar 

  • Greskovits, B. (2014). Legacies of industrialization and paths of transnational integration after socialism. In M. Beissinger & S. Kotkin (Eds.), Historical legacies of communism in Russia and Eastern Europe (pp. 68–89). New York: Cambridge University Press.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Hancké, B., & Rhodes, M. (2005). EMU and labor market institutions in Europe. The rise and fall of national social pacts. Work and Occupations, 32(2), 196–228.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Harvey, D. (2001). Globalisation and the spatial fix. Geographische Revue, 2(3), 23–31.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hay, C., Riiheläinen, J. M., Smith, N. J., & Watson, M. (2008). Ireland: The outlier inside. In K. Dyson (Ed.), The euro at ten: Europeanization, power, and convergence (pp. 182–203). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Holman, O., & Van der Pijl, K. (2003). Structure and process in transnational European business. In A. W. Cafruny & M. Ryner (Eds.), A ruined fortress?: Neoliberal hegemony and transformation in Europe (pp. 71–94). Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.

    Google Scholar 

  • Höpner, M. (2007). Corporate governance reform and the German party paradox. Comparative Politics, 39(4), 401–420.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hudson, M. (2014). Stockholm syndrome in the Baltics: Latvia’s neoliberal war against labor and industry. In J. Sommers & C. Woolfson (Eds.), The contradictions of austerity: The socio-economic costs of the neoliberal Baltic model (pp. 17–43). London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jacoby, W. (2006). The enlargement of the European Union and NATO: Ordering from the menu in Central Europe. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jacoby, W. (2014). The EU factor in fat times and in lean: Did the EU amplify the boom and soften the bust? JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies, 52(1), 52–70.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Jessop, B. (2002). Globalisation and the national state. In S. Aaronowitz and P. Bratsis, eds Paradigm lost: State theory reconsidered (pp. 185–220). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jessop, B. (2014). Capitalist diversity and variety: Variegation, the world market, compossibility and ecological dominance. Capital & Class, 38(1), 45–58.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Jessop, B., & Sum, N.-L. (2006). Beyond the regulation approach: Putting capitalist economies in their place. Cheltenham/Northampton: Edward Elgar Publishing.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Johnson, J., & Barnes, A. (2015). Financial nationalism and its international enablers: The Hungarian experience. Review of International Political Economy, 22(3), 535–69

    Google Scholar 

  • Kemeny, J. (2005). ‘The really big trade-off’ between home ownership and welfare: Castles’ evaluation of the 1980 thesis, and a reformulation 25 years on. Housing, Theory and Society, 22(2), 59–75.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Langley, P. (2009). The everyday life of global finance: Saving and borrowing in Anglo-America. Oxford: Oxford university Press

    Google Scholar 

  • Lipietz, A. (1992). Towards a new economic order: Postfordism, ecology and democracy. Cambridge, MA: Polity Press Cambridge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lütz, S., & Kranke, M. (2014). The European rescue of the Washington consensus? EU and IMF lending to Central and Eastern European countries. Review of International Political Economy, 21(2), 310–338.

    Google Scholar 

  • Majone, G. (1997). From the positive to the regulatory state: Causes and consequences of changes in the mode of governance. Journal of Public Policy, 17(02), 139–167.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Meardi, G. (2013). Social failures of EU enlargement: A case of workers voting with their feet. London/New York Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Medve-Bálint, G. (2014). The role of the EU in shaping FDI flows to East Central Europe. JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies, 52(1), 35–51.

    Google Scholar 

  • Myant, M., & Drahokoupil, J. (2011). Transition economies: Political economy in Russia, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia. Hoboken: John Wiley and Sons.

    Google Scholar 

  • Offe, C. (1991). Capitalism by democratic design? Democratic theory facing the triple transition in East Central Europe. Social Research, 58(2), 865–892.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ost, D. (2006). The defeat of solidarity: Anger and politics in postcommunist Europe. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Palier, B., & Thelen, K. (2010). Institutionalizing dualism: Complementarities and change in France and Germany. Politics & Society, 38(1), 119–148.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Raviv, O. (2008). Chasing the dragon east: Exploring the frontiers of Western European finance. Contemporary Politics, 14(3), 297–314.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ryner, M. (2012). Financial crisis, orthodoxy and heterodoxy in the production of knowledge about the EU. Millennium-Journal of International Studies, 40(3), 647–673.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ryner, M. (2015). Europe’s ordoliberal iron cage: Critical political economy, the euro area crisis and its management. Journal of European Public Policy, 22 (2), 275–294.

    Google Scholar 

  • Scepanovic, V. (2013). FDI as a solution to the challenges of late development: Catch-up without convergence? Budapest: Central European University.

    Google Scholar 

  • Scharpf, F. W. (1999). Governing in Europe: Effective and democratic? Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Schimmelfennig, F., & Sedelmeier, U. (2004). Governance by conditionality: EU rule transfer to the candidate countries of Central and Eastern Europe. Journal of European Public Policy, 11(4), 661–679.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Schwartz, H. (2009). Subprime nation: American power, global capital, and the housing bubble. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schwartz, H. M., & Seabrooke, L. (2009). Varieties of residential capitalism in the international political economy: Old welfare states and the new politics of housing. In H. M. Schwartz & L. Seabrooke (Eds.), The politics of housing booms and busts (pp. 1–27). Basingstoke/New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Sedelmeier, U. (2014). Anchoring democracy from above? The European Union and democratic backsliding in Hungary and Romania after accession. JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies, 52(1), 105–121.

    Google Scholar 

  • Soederberg, S. (2014). Debtfare states and the poverty industry: Money, discipline and the surplus population. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sommers, J. (2014). Austerity, internal devaluation, and social (in)security in Latvia. In J. Sommers & C. Woolfson (Eds.), The contradictions of austerity: The socio-economic costs of the neoliberal Baltic model (pp. 17–43). London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sommers, J., & Woolfson, C. (2014). The contradictions of austerity: The socio-economic costs of the neoliberal Baltic model. New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Stockhammer, E. (2008). Some stylized facts on the finance-dominated accumulation regime. Competition & Change, 12(2), 184–202.

    Google Scholar 

  • Stockhammer, E., Durand, C., & List, L. (2015). European growth models and working class restructuring before the crisis. Post-Keynesian Economic Study Group, Working Paper 1508. www.postkeynesian.net.

    Google Scholar 

  • Streeck, W. (2015). The rise of the European consolidation state. MPIfG discussion paper 15/1. http://www.econstor.eu/handle/10419/107091

  • Szacki, J. (1995). Liberalism after communism. Budapest: Central European University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Vachudova, M. A. (2005). Europe undivided: Democracy, leverage, and integration after communism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Van Apeldoorn, B. (2000). Transnational class agency and European governance: The case of the European round table of industrialists. New Political Economy, 5(2), 157–181.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Van der Pijl, K., Holman, O., & Raviv, O. (2011). The resurgence of German capital in Europe: EU integration and the restructuring of Atlantic networks of interlocking directorates after 1991. Review of International Political Economy, 18(3), 384–408.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Van Treeck, T. (2009). The political economy debate on ‘financialization’–A macroeconomic perspective. Review of International Political Economy, 16(5), 907–944.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ziltener, P. (2000). Die Veränderung von Staatlichkeit in Europa: Regulations-Und Staatstheoretische Überlegungen. In Die Konfiguration Europas (pp. 73–101). Münster: Westfälisches Dampfboot.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Central European University, Budapest, Hungary

    Dorothee Bohle

Authors
  1. Dorothee Bohle
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Hamilton College , New York, USA

    Alan Cafruny

  2. King's College London , London, United Kingdom

    Leila Simona Talani

  3. University of Stockholm, Grojecc, Sweden

    Gonzalo Pozo Martin

Copyright information

© 2016 The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s)

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Bohle, D. (2016). East Central Europe in the European Union. In: Cafruny, A., Talani, L., Pozo Martin, G. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Critical International Political Economy. Palgrave Handbooks in IPE. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-50018-2_19

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation