2021/06/28 by Marek Naczyk · 3 citations
Business, Management and Accounting · Economics, Econometrics and Finance · Social Sciences · #Global Financial Crisis and Policies #Regional Development and Policy #State Capitalism and Financial Governance
paper · pdf · doi:10.1080/09692290.2021.1924831
openalex publication_date 2021/06/28 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29
With rare exception, political economists assume that developmental policies and developmental alliances between states and business result from top-down, state co-option or coercion of business. They also do not expect the subsidiaries of multinational corporations (MNCs) and their local, non-expat, managers – the ‘compradors’ – to press for developmentalism in host countries. Based on process tracing of Polish economic policy since the 2008 global financial crisis (GFC), I argue that, in Poland’s dependent market economy and FDI-led growth regime, ‘comprador’ bankers co-opted state actors into renationalizing foreign-owned Polish banks and into reforming development institutions to support indigenous firms’ expansion. Moreover, comprador bankers operationalized new industrial policies for which state actors, indigenous entrepreneurs and ‘compradors’ simultaneously started pressing in the 2010s. Comprador bankers’ motives were their frustration at their weak managerial autonomy in foreign-headquartered MNCs and their concerns about the negative macro-economic implications of their parent banks’ attempts to capture their Polish subsidiaries’ excess liquidity during the GFC in order to improve their own liquidity positions.