2026/07/27 by Jasper P. Simons, Cornel Ban
Economics, Econometrics and Finance · Social Sciences · #Post-Communist Economic and Political Transition #Regional resilience and development #Social Policy and Reform Studies
paper · pdf · doi:10.1080/09692290.2026.2704090
openalex publication_date 2026/07/27 · openalex created_date 2026/07/28 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01
This article advances dependency theory by rethinking the place of East-Central Europe (ECE) within contemporary global hierarchies of development. Its contribution to the revitalized neo-dependency literature is threefold. First, it reclassifies ECE as a consolidated, developmentally mobile semi-periphery that has achieved strong sectoral upgrading across both manufacturing and high-tech services. Second, it demonstrates that this upgrading is inseparable from the EU integration regime: regulatory harmonization, fiscal transfers, and legal embedding in the Single Market generate developmental dynamics that thinner or more transactional arrangements cannot replicate, making the structure of external anchoring a key explanatory variable. Third, by situating ECE in a systematic global comparison with semi-peripheries across Asia, Latin America, as well as with Europe’s non-EU neighborhood, it shows that pessimistic structuralist dependency perspectives require further revision. From these vantage points, the article outlines a research agenda connecting the revitalized comparative dependency literature with the ECE political economy scholarship.