Balkan Economic and Political Developments
Balkan Economic and Political Developments

Author(s): Tamás Novák
Subject(s): EU-Accession / EU-DEvelopment
Published by: Kossuth Kiadó Zt.
Summary/Abstract: The South East European economies during the last one and a half century several times tried to implement economic and political stabilisation programs to reduce the development backwardness compared to the more advanced European countries. However, these reforms always were stopped, due to an unfavourable combination of internal and external factors. These trends led to continuous strengthening of negative features of political and economic structures in these countries that seriously limited further developments as well. It is important to see that during this long period the top down economic transformation that was successful in many parts of the world could not work in the Balkan given the very scarce domestic resources necessary to implement far reaching solid reform programs. In addition, the interest of foreign capital and foreign economic actors were also limited that it was not enough to prompt a real economic transformation from outside. This lack of resources made impossible any successful and durable economic and social transformation. At the same time, the region played a special periphery of the conflicts between ‘great powers’ that also made difficult to create conditions for durable reforms. To sum up neither internal nor external forces were able to initiate the required reforms.

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