Economic nationalists, regional investment aid, and the stability of FDI-led growth in East Central Europe
研究了中东欧经济民族主义政府虽公开反对依赖外资，却通过欧盟区域投资援助规则将大部分援助给予外国企业，从而维持了外资驱动型增长的稳定性。
Although economic nationalist governments in East Central Europe (ECE) have strongly challenged FDI-dependence, FDI-led growth has remained stable across the region.The political economy literature explains this puzzle with enduring business-state elite interactions and the disciplining role of the EU.Instead, we show that the EU's regional investment aid rules, which provide central governments in relatively backward member states with considerable policy space, serve as the main policy tool for reinforcing FDI-dependence.Using a unique dataset on regional investment aid granted between 2004 and 2022 in the Visegrd countries (V4), we show that each government, regardless of its ideological background, granted the vast majority of this type of aid to foreign firms.In addition, contrary to their political rhetoric, economic nationalist governments in Hungary and Poland outperformed their nonnationalist counterparts in granting aid to foreign firms.This suggests an instrumental use of this transnationally rooted policy opportunity: as their European political isolation grew, economic nationalists increasingly resorted to the promotion of foreign firms because the continued inflow of foreign capital has a legitimising effect both at home and abroad.