Foreign Direct Investment in Slovakia Theoretical Reflections on a Changing Investment Incentive Structure Kytir Sandra Department of Sociology Lancaster University UK

Tendencies in the Slovak Incentive Structure (1) Broadening of the notion of investment incentives (2) From an incentive structure to a steering structure

Brief Overview of Slovakia‘s Relationship to FDI  Shift from Economic Nationalism to Economic Liberalism  Changes in the relationship between political and economic autonomy  FDI is recognised as a policy field  Subordination of economic policy to international competitiveness

Tendencies in the Slovak Incentive Structure

 Reasons: necessary diversification of competitive strategies, external and internal constraints, financial aspects (e.g. cost- efficiency)  Consequence: increasing influence of foreign investors on regional development coinciding with increasing efforts to embed FDI in regional economies

Tendencies in the Slovak Incentive Structure

 Consequence: tendential shift from FDI as developmental strategy to FDI as part of a developmental strategy

Concluding Remarks  These two tendencies are inter-related  Competitive strategies are by no means coherent and consistent over time; rather, they have an evolutionary trajectory, going through various stages