Varieties of backyard management: EU integration and the evolution of economic state capacities in Europe's periphery (Prof. László Bruszt, EUI)

In the developmental literature a prominent role is played by the notion of dependent development. The concept refers to the structural limitations of economic development in the countries outside of the global core and, at the same time, the country specific variation in the possibilities for development.

Representing a break with the approaches that have claimed that economic fate of nations outside of the global core is predetermined by their position in the global economic system, the notion of dependent development brought in the study of core–periphery relations domestic agency back in. By way of upgrading their public and private institutions, domestic economic and political actors can create new developmental alliances and play active role in shaping developmental pathways away from the periphery. Actors from the core countries have played a secondary role in this literature that has focused on the diverse ways in which changes in the polity, the government, or the governance of (semi) peripheral economies might empower domestic actors and allow them to improve their position in transnational markets. 

Drawing on this approach, in this paper we introduce the notion of interdependent development and propose the exploration of constellations in which a) core countries have stakes in the development in (semi) peripheral countries and b) they use various strategies to alter domestic institutions in the periphery and domestic actors’ incentives and/or capacities to shape developmental outcomes.

About the lecturer

Prof. Bruszt has a Ph.D. in Sociology from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Since 1992 he has been successively associate professor and professor at the Department of Political Sciences at the Central European University. He has taught in the United States at Notre Dame University, at the New School for Social Research and at Cornell University. He has been a research fellow at the EUI in 1987/88, and a visiting fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg in Berlin, at the Budapest Collegium and at the Center for Advanced Study in Behavioral Sciences at Stanford.