Foreign Investment Inflows to Former Socialist Countries in the Balkans: Mapping Global Capitalism

Abstract

Former socialist countries in the Balkans have attracted substantial foreign investments in their economies in the past two decades. Focusing on top-ranking investments in the region from China, India, Russia, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands, this study examines the rationales driving these foreign capital inflows into Balkan economies, the domestic industries and assets they support and acquire in the region, and their social and political effects. Mapping these investment patterns, the essay argues, reveals the emergent dynamics of contemporary capitalism in the region and globally, especially how “central” and “peripheral” postsocialist and postcolonial economies transitioning to capitalism invest and thereby shape each other, the emerging geopolitical order of power, and the nature of global capitalism. In the Balkans these dynamics are marked by the following intersecting events: Indian, Chinese, Russian, and Balkan states transitions to capitalism after colonialism and state socialism; India, China, and Russia’s plans for power and influence in the Balkans, Europe, and globally; and desires for financial, material, cultural, and political expansion, especially among non-Anglophone European former “minor empires,” such as Germany, the Netherlands, and Italy. Foreign investment inflows into Balkan countries illuminate these important trends shaping contemporary global capitalism.

• Balkans
• empire
• foreign investments
• global capitalism
• postcolonial
• postsocialist