This book offers a critical analysis of recent developments in the automotive industry of East-Central Europe (ECE). Economists, industry specialists and national governments have considered the rapid development of the automotive industry in ECE in the past twenty years an unqualified success. This rapid growth has been based on large inflows of foreign direct investment (FDI) from Western Europe, North America, Japan and South Korea, and it significantly contributed to GDP growth, created thousands of new jobs, and completely transformed the previously existing automotive industry in the region. This volume offers an analysis that goes beyond uncritical celebratory accounts of this rapid growth. It is based on original, detailed firm-level research conducted by the author in Czechia and Slovakia between 2009 and 2015 that covered assembly firms and the networks of component suppliers. Theoretically and conceptually, the analysis will draw on the global production networks and global value chains perspectives. Drawing on the original empirical data and on additional available information, this volume concentrates on several important questions related to the development of the automotive industry in ECE in the 2000s:• The role of FDI in the rapid development of the automotive industry after 1990 and particularly in the 2000s.• The upgrading of the automotive industry in East-Central Europe through FDI• The position of ECE in the automotive industry research and development (R&D)• The effects of the 2008-2009 economic crisis in the automotive industry of ECE.• The role of state in the rapid development of the automotive industry in ECE in the 1990s and 2000s.• The effects of FDI on domestic firms in the form of linkages between foreign-owned and domestic firms and spillovers from foreign-owned to domestic firms.

East Central Europe is of considerable interest in view of EU and NATO enlargement. Economic growth is very heavily dependent on foreign investment and prospects for the regions in each transition state, therefore depend very much on where foreign investors choose to locate their projects. This book brings together a wide range of prominent authors from the US and Europe, including the late Frank Carter, to provide a timely critical examination and analysis of patterns and reasons behind foreign investment and how this affects regional development.

This open access Palgrave Pivot explores four major aspects of globalization: foreign trade, capital and information flows, and the movement of people. The book examines how the state socialist countries of East Central Europe fit into the general trend of globalization after WWII. It focuses on three specific countries in the region: Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary. The study also considers conceptual problems: whether recently introduced terms such as 'alternative globalization' and 'socialist proto-globalization' are plausible for interpreting state socialist globalization. Special attention is paid to the study of continuities and discontinuities in the process of globalization in East Central Europe, which is a key issue in current debates. This requires a long-term perspective, so the study covers not only the decades before 1989 but also subsequent developments. In doing so, the book attempts to find a balance between old and new mainstream interpretations: it recognises that East Central European societies experienced considerable globalization during the state socialist era; however, based on empirical findings, instead of 'alternative' or 'proto-' globalization, the book suggests other notions to conceptualize this process, including fragmentation, selectivity, and unevenness. Thus, the proposed understanding could also contribute to discussions on globalization beyond East Central Europe. Béla Tomka is a professor of Contemporary Social and Economic History at the University of Szeged, Hungary. He is the author of 16 books including Welfare in East and West (2004), A Social History of Twentieth-Century Europe (2013, winner of 'Outstanding Academic Title 2013 Award' by Choice, American Library Association), Austerities and Aspirations: A Comparative History of Growth, Consumption and Quality of Life in East Central Europe since 1945 (2020), and the editor of several other volumes. He is the head of the Department of Contemporary History, University of Szeged, co-founder and board member of the International Social History Association, Amsterdam, as well as leader of the History of Globalization Research Group, Budapest-Szeged, established by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.

This book examines the dramatic increase in automotive assembly plants in the former Socialist Central European (CE) nations of Czechia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia from 1989 onwards. Enticed by relatively lower-wage labour and significant government incentives, the world’s largest automakers have launched more than 20 passenger car assembly complexes in CE nations, with production accelerating dramatically since 2001. As a result, the annual passenger car production in Western Europe declined by more than 20% between 2001 and 2015, and alternatively in the CEE it increased by nearly 170% during this period. Drawing on case studies of 25 current and former foreign-run assembly plants, the author presents a rare historical account of automotive foreign assembly plants in the CE following this dramatic geographic shift. This book will expand the knowledge of policy-makers in Europe in relation to their pursuits of FDI and will be of great interest to scholars and students of business, economic history, political science, and development.

The book provides a picture of the increasing significance of Central Europe and especially Poland in global production networks, discussing the underlying economic, social, and political factors. The key question it answers is to what extent the growth of production and exports results in industrial upgrading towards the manufacturing of more sophisticated high value-added products, new technologies, and the development of non-production functions, especially design and advanced service capabilities. The book shows that Central European manufacturing no longer exhibits the typical features of production activities in the periphery, in particular low density and diversity, low productivity, narrow specialisation in low value-added activities and poor local linkages, hence limited local value creation and value capture. There is still dependence on foreign-controlled enterprises in several sectors and limited product innovation, which remains a major weakness. Further, the book assesses the social consequences of the ongoing development of manufacturing capabilities in Poland and its impact on employment conditions including the quality of jobs and level of wages. The authors provide insight into relationships between globalisation processes, place-specific attributes, and current economic policies, and as such the book will be of interest to academics, policy makers and other stakeholders interested in both peripheral economies and core countries and representing various international organisations dealing with economic transition and development.

This book contributes to the current revival of dependency approaches for the analysis of global capitalism. Reflecting on contemporary uses of the “Dependency Research Program” (DRP) and a refined analytical toolkit, it makes two distinctive contributions to this revival: the analysis of new “situations of dependency”, and the understanding of the “mechanisms of dependency”. The individual chapters draw from a wide range of cases and data from Latin America and Europe and imbricate concepts and ideas from the DRP with those of other approaches, from post-Keynesian economics to structural economics, institutional economics, regulation theory, comparative capitalisms, business politics, economic geography and critical finance studies, providing a rich array of possibilities for virtuous inter-disciplinary cross-fertilization. This volume is a valuable contribution for those interested in understanding how global capitalism works in Latin America, Europe and beyond.