Join PERG, the Political Economy Research Group, in their opening lecture by Assistant Professor Visnja Vukov (University of Vienna) and afterwards at the welcome reception.
ABSTRACT / This lecture analyzes developmental pathways and economic growth models in Eastern and Southern Europe from the perspective of the dependency research program. It focuses on two main situations of dependency in Europe: peripheral financialization with consumption-led growth in the South and dependent reindustrialization through foreign direct investments with export-led growth in Central and Eastern Europe. Contrary to existing approaches that attribute this East-South divergence to their geographic position and systemic features of European monetary integration, the argument here is that these peripheral growth models appear as a result of different national and EU-level policy responses to the challenge of core-periphery market integration. While the Southern states sought to protect domestic firms, allowing for, or even directly contributing to deindustrialization in the face of competition with the European core economies, Central and East European states aimed to preserve their industrial legacy even at the expense of FDI-dependency. These policy responses were in turn shaped by distinct domestic political coalitions as well as by dramatically different EU strategies of governing integration, which left more space for reproduction of domestic coalitions and growth strategies in the South than in the East. The talk will also briefly address the political implications of different forms of dependency and their impact on policy autonomy and the room for politicization of core-periphery relations in the East and in the South of Europe.
VISNJA VUKOV IS AN ASSISTANT PROFESSOR (UNIVERSITÄTSASSISTENTIN) AT THE DEPARTMENT OF POLITICAL SCIENCE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF VIENNA. SHE HOLDS A PHD IN POLITICAL AND SOCIAL SCIENCES OF THE EUROPEAN UNIVERSITY INSTITUTE IN FLORENCE AND A MASTER OF SCIENCE IN SOCIOLOGY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD. BEFORE COMING TO VIENNA SHE WAS A TENURE-TRACK ASSISTANT PROFESSOR AT THE POMPEU FABRA UNIVERSITY IN BARCELONA AND A SENIOR RESEARCHER AT THE JOINT JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY AND POMPEU FABRA UNIVERSITY PUBLIC POLICY CENTER. SHE HAD ALSO WORKED AS A POST-DOCTORAL RESEARCHER AT THE EUROPEAN UNIVERSITY INSTITUTE IN FLORENCE. HER RESEARCH LIES AT THE INTERSECTION OF COMPARATIVE AND INTERNATIONAL POLITICAL ECONOMY. HER MOST RECENT PROJECTS EXPLORE HOW EUROPEAN INTEGRATION TOGETHER WITH DOMESTIC POLITICS SHAPES CAPITALIST TRANSFORMATIONS IN PERIPHERAL COUNTRIES OF THE EU. HER WORK APPEARS IN JOURNALS SUCH AS REVIEW OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICAL ECONOMY, JOURNAL OF EUROPEAN PUBLIC POLICY, WEST EUROPEAN POLITICS, COMPARATIVE EUROPEAN POLITICS, AND STUDIES IN COMPARATIVE INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT.
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