Horizon 2020: Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship
Project title:
SEEGROW
Southeast Europe’s emerging growth advocates: Domestic firms, technology and economic governance in institutionally weak states
Start date: 1 September 2020
End date: 30 November 2022
Researcher:
Dr Sonja Avlijaš
Email: sonja.avlijas@ekof.bg.ac.rs
Office: 706
Summary of the project
SEEGROW engaged with political economy, institutional economics, management, collective action and governance literatures. It was interested in economic governance of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the era of information and communication technology (ICT) and knowledge driven growth. It was empirically grounded in Serbia and Bosnia & Herzegovina with an aim to improve our understanding of this phenomenon in semi-peripheral countries with weak and captured formal institutions, such as those in Southeast Europe (SEE). The project’s starting premise was that the rise of ICT has opened up international opportunities for SMEs with industrial skills but little capital. This then reduces the negative impact of weak formal governance structures on the countries’ overall innovation and growth.
The project had three key main objectives: (1) To understand in which ways the interaction of SMEs with ICT empowers them to offset some undesirable institutional influences in SEE; (2) To promote the value of contextualised fieldwork in enhancing our understanding of the political economy of economic development in captured states with weak institutions; and (3) To support economic development efforts in SEE and beyond, by providing an alternative account on governance of the new ICT-driven growth frontier.
Most economic and political economy analyses of the SEE region have focused on institutional reforms and the strengthening of state capacities as key preconditions to growth, while sociological efforts have been directed towards problematising the ideology of neoliberalism as a key macrostructural explanation for SEE’s lagged development. SEEGROW uses interdisciplinarity to bring into these debates the question of individual agency in the ICT era and how humans influence the rules that structure their lives instead of being captured by the status quo.
SEEGROW is of high political and policy relevance because it changes the way that the international development assistance community (including EU enlargement efforts) looks at the problem of development in institutionally weak states. Instead of worrying about the captured state’s inability to reform, and looking for ways to overturn this predicament, the project turns their attention towards bottom-up sources of change which, under the influence of exogenous factors such as ICT could perhaps become empowered to change the rules of the game. SEEGROW unpacks the traditional policy paradigm that formal rules of the game must change first and gives agency to bottom-up agents. This question is extremely important for the EU and its role in SEE and its other neighbourhoods.
Progress beyond the state of the art, project results and potential impacts
SEEGROW project has contributed to a better understanding of agency of SMEs in SEE and other semi-peripheral areas around the globe. By recognising their changing position, due to the rise of ICT and knowledge driven growth, as well as other global processes such as delocalisation and fragmentation of production, the project underlines that institutional change at the state level may not be the only prerequisite to socio-economic progress. To that end, it also emphasises the importance of supranational and subnational institutions when it comes to taking advantage of these opportunities.
The results also offer practical policy guidance on how these emerging developmental opportunities can be better monitored and acknowledged by policy makers. It also offers novel information to industry, because it shows to smaller economic agents that they have more agency than they initially believed. The results of the project are aligned with and contribute to both national, regional and European-level priorities and policies such as those targeting regional cohesion, inclusive growth and SMEs. The project also had an indirect impact on gender, since the Individual Fellow has conducted several activities that promote female participation in academia.
Project supervisor: Prof. Mihail Arandarenko
Fieldwork in Bosnia & Herzegovina was supported by the Faculty of Economics, University of Banja Luка.
Publications
Avlijaš, S., Medić, P. & Udovički, K. 2023. “Reconfiguring FDI dependency: SMEs as emerging stakeholders in an advanced peripheral export-led growth model“, Competition & Change, OnlineFirst, https://doi.org/10.1177/10245294231209277 (Open Access)
Avlijaš, S. 2022. “How regional integration agreements can foster inclusive growth: Lessons from exporting SMEs in the Western Balkans” Economic Annals 67(235): 67-93. https://doi.org/10.2298/EKA2235067A
Avlijaš, S. 2022. 2022. “What Is the Role of Small and Medium Enterprises in the “Open Balkans” Initiative?”, Quarterly Monitor of Economic Trends and Policies in Serbia (QM), issue 68. Open access at: https://fren.org.rs/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Highlight-1-1.pdf
Avlijaš, S. 2022. “Can “Winner-takes-most” dynamics of regional economic integration be avoided in the Western Balkans? Lessons on resourcefulness from smaller economic agents”,
LSEE-CEFTA Research Papers on International Trade, Paper No.5 (April), London School of Economics and Political Science. Open access at: https://www.lse.ac.uk/LSEE-Research-on-South-Eastern-Europe/Assets/Documents/Research/LSEE-CEFTA-Network/Papers/LSEE-CEFTA-Paper-No5.pdf
Awards
2021 LSEE-CEFTA Best paper award – First runner-up
