Book Review

Breinbauer, A., Brennan, L., Jäger, J., Nachbagauer, A. G. M, & Nölke, A. (eds) (2019). Emerging Market Multinationals and Europe: Challenges and Strategies. Cham: Springer, p. 279. ISBN: 978-3-030-31293-0

The New Age of Hybridity and Clash of Norms: China, BRICS and Challenges of Global Governance in a Post-liberal International Order

This article sketches an analytical framework to account for new patterns of global governance. We characterize the emergent post-liberal international order as a new age of hybridity, which signifies that no overriding set of paradigms dominate global governance. Instead we have a complex web of competing norms, which creates new opportunities as well as major elements of instability, uncertainty and anxiety. In the age of hybridity, non-Western great powers (led by China) play an increasingly counter-hegemonic role in shaping new style multilateralism – ontologically fragmented, normatively inconsistent, and institutionally incoherent. We argue that democracy paradox constitutes the fundamental issue at stake in this new age of hybridity. On the one hand, global power transitions seem to enable ‘democratization of globalization’ by opening more space to the hitherto excluded non-Western states to make their voices heard. On the other hand, emerging pluralism in global governance is accompanied by the regression of liberal democracy and spread of illiberalism that enfeeble ‘globalization of democratization.

Regulating international finance and the evolving imbalance of capitalisms since the 1970s

In this paper, I put the ongoing G20 process of improving the regulation of international finance into a historically informed perspective. To understand the driving forces behind and obstacles to international cooperation in governing finance I combine concepts from international political economy and comparative political economy (IPE and CPE) that have previously been only loosely connected. Building on the IPE literature that highlights the historical and political embeddedness of financial regulation I depart from the IPE focus on the globalization of US-UK financial market capitalism. CPE studies show that, since the 1970s, different variations of capitalism have reacted in distinct ways to the collapse of the Bretton Woods system, lower growth rates and saturated domestic markets. Most notably, there has been a divergence between the approaches of financializing countries (US, UK) and export-oriented countries (Germany, East Asian nations). The interdependence between financialized and export-oriented variations of capitalism has contributed to the dynamics and crises of international finance for the past four decades. This 'imbalance of capitalisms' also became an obstacle to international cooperation in regulating finance. Faced with the 'trilemma of economic policies,' the financialized and export-oriented variants of capitalism have chosen different combinations of macroeconomic policies, currency policies, and the regulation of financial flows and financial firms. This divergence has led to conflicting preferences with regard to international cooperation to regulate finance. -- Dieses Papier betrachtet die historischen Hintergründe der Schwierigkeiten und Konflikte bei der (Re-)regulierung der internationalen Finanzbeziehungen in der G20. Diese Konflikte lassen sich besonders gut bei dem Versuch der Koordinierung von Fiskal- und Geldpolitik, der Regulierung von Banken und Finanzströmen sowie der Reduzierung globaler wirtschaftlicher Ungleichgewichte beobachten. Hierzu werden bisher nur unzureichend verbundene Ansätze aus der Internationalen und der Vergleichenden Politischen Ökonomie (IPÖ/VPÖ) kombiniert. Die IPÖ-inspirierte Betrachtung internationaler Kooperation verbunden mit dem VPÖ-inspirierten Fokus auf die pfadabhängig unterschiedlichen Spielarten des Kapitalismus ermöglicht ein besseres Verständnis der Hintergründe von Konflikten bei der Regulierung internationaler Finanzbeziehungen. Besonders berücksichtigt werden hierbei die unterschiedlichen Entwicklungen verschiedener Spielarten des Kapitalismus seit dem Zusammenbruch des Bretton-Woods-Systems Anfang der 1970er-Jahre. Die Interdependenz von finanzmarktorientiertem Kapitalismus in den Vereinigten Staaten und Großbritannien sowie exportorientierter Kapitalismusvarianten in Europa und Ostasien haben die internationalen Finanzbeziehungen in den letzten vier Jahrzehnten entscheidend geprägt. Beide Modelle unterscheiden sich ganz erheblich bezüglich der institutionellen Arrangements bei der Regulierung von Finanzbeziehungen und der Fiskal-, Geld- und Währungspolitik. Diese Unterschiede wiederum führen zu divergierenden Präferenzen und Konflikten bei der internationalen Koordinierung der Regulierung von Finanzbeziehungen.

Varieties of state capitalism

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The transformation of post-socialist capitalism – from developmental state to clan state?

Various characterisations exist of the model of post-social capitalism exist. While most typologies underscore the prominent role of the state in post-socialist capitalism compared to Western economies, the literature is less clear about what exactly this role consists of. For the case of East Central Europe, some authors underscore the weakness of the state and its ‘capture’ by business interests, while others attribute to the state a benign role in successful industrial restructuring. We show that both views are of limited use to understand the phase of ‘backsliding’ that these economies are currently experiencing. We draw on anthropological models of post-socialist states that focus on elite dynamics within the state and show that this focus allows us to interpret backsliding in Hungary as a reversal of the developmental state into a clan-state

THE CONCEPT OF THE TRUST IN ROMANIAN LAW

The trust, a unique institution, specific for the English-Saxon legal system - common-law- has been constantly rejected by the European continental legal systems (civil law).As a trend imposed by the requirements for strengthening the Single European Market, the well known segregation of the law in common law and continental civil law, has been diminished in time thus, during the last decade, the transformations occurred in the two legal systems, in the context of Europeanization and globalisation of businesses and implicitly of law, have managed to lead to the expected mixture, modification and acceptance of ideas, theories and fundamental legal institutions of these legal systems.By the New Civil Code, the Trust is also regulated in Romania under the name of “Fiducie”, and it shall be further used and developed in both the relations between the individuals as well as in the business environment. This paper, first of this series, intends to analyze the meaning of Trust in the light of the Romanian law, but also from the view of its traditional meanings as established in England and the United States of America and, last but not least, from the perspective of the regulatory trends in this direction, existing at the level of the European Union.Trust, Fiducia, Internal Market, New Romanian Civil Code,Common Law, Civil Law, Equity

Endogennoe razvityie : novie vizovi dlja promislennosztyi Centralnoj Evropi = Endogenous Development : The New Challenge for Central European Industry

This paper examines the applicability of the concept of endogenous regional development to Central European post-socialist countries. Endogenous development emerged in response to the pressures of the global economy in Western Europe, and focuses on exploiting locally rooted competitive advantages that can counteract the cost advantages of less developed economies, providing a “high road” of socio-economic development. In Central Europe, industrial restructuring has mainly followed a development path based on Foreign Direct Investment, which has reinvigorated competitiveness, but now faces the need to go beyond low costs, and counteract the unfavourable effects of external capital dependency. The paper identifies two different paths to encourage endogenous development, drawing attention to their institutional background and the expected consequences on territorial development