Besnik Pula, Globalization Under and After Socialism: The Evolution of Transnational Capital in Central And Eastern Europe
| Author | Pooja |
| Date | 01 October 2021 |
| DOI | 10.1177/00208817211045529 |
| Published date | 01 October 2021 |
| Subject Matter | Book Reviews |
https://doi.org/10.1177/00208817211045529
International Studies
58(4) 530 –532, 2022
© 2021 Jawaharlal Nehru University
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DOI: 10.1177/00208817211045529
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Book Review
Besnik Pula, Globalization Under and After Socialism: The Evolution
of Transnational Capital in Central And Eastern Europe (Stanford
University Press, 2018), 272 pp., $65.00.
A prevalent narrative about globalization is how countries and people cooperate
and integrate. And the concept of globalization came after the collapse of the
Soviet Union and some of the socialist allies. The Eastern Europe’s globalization
started with political changes in 1989, and now global actions involved economy,
politics, culture, education, environment or other matters. So, globalization
describes the way countries and people of the world interact and even unite.
In his Globalization Under And After Socialism: The Evolution of Transnational
Capital in Central and Eastern Europe, Besnik Pula researched the region’s
history and comparatively examined its long-run industrial development. He tried
to locate critical junctures that forced the hands of Central and Eastern European
elites and made them look at options beyond the domestic economy and the
socialist bloc ideas.
The book offers two main points; the region’s differentiated capacities through
investment, and the export policy. In the 1970s, Central and Eastern European
socialist states were increasingly engaging with the capitalist West to expand
access to markets, technology, and capital for development and solved the many
crises of the regions. This shift began to challenge the developmental model in
support of exports and transnational integration. A new reliance on export
launched the alliance of the Eastern European industry into value chains that cut
across the East–West political divide. But after 1989, these chains proved to be
critical gateways for FDI and courses of global capitalism. In mapping out these
changes, the improves our understanding of a regional shift that began well before
the fall of the Berlin Wall while also explaining the distinct international roles that
Central and Eastern European states have assumed in the globalised 21st century.
In this book, the author discussed countries’ dependence on foreign direct
investment, export specialization and the dominance of transnational
corporations in the local economy—former socialist economies of central and
Eastern Europe—which are globalised. The author put questions before
analysing institutional reform and globalization. The questions are: Was the
socialist past merely an obstacle these countries needed to overcome to join the
global economy? Or, did socialism instead lay the groundwork for the region’s
present-day globalization? An important part of the book comes when the
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