The post-communist states of South East Europe (SEE) have a strong commitment to decentralisation as a means to contribute to the consolidation of democracy, and to improve institutions for local economic and social development. However, the experience of transition in post-communist SEE has been to widen regional and local inequalities, creating a vulnerability of the affected regions to external shocks such as the recent economic crisis and consequent threats to political stability. This book explores the nature and effectiveness of policies of decentralisation and regional development in this less well studied part of Europe. It identifies the impact of decentralisation and regional development on spatial inequalities, and evaluates the policy responses in different political and institutional environments.
William Bartlett is Senior Research Fellow at the London School of Economics, UK, and Honorary Professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. He has been Lecturer in Development Economics and Comparative Economic Systems at the Universities of Southampton, Bath and Bristol; Research Fellow at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy; and Professor of Social Economics at the School for Policy Studies, University of Bristol. He has been President of the International Association for the Economics of Participation (IAFEP, 1998–2000) and President of the European Association for Comparative Economic Studies (EACES, 2006–8). He has worked as Senior Economic Advisor to the European Commission in Kosovo, and as a consultant to the European Parliament, the European Training Foundation, UNDP, the World Bank and other international organizations on various assignments in SEE.
Sanja Malekovic is Senior Research Fellow in the Institute for International Relations, Zagreb, Croatia. She has been a lecturer for the postgraduate course on European Studies at the University of Padua (EU Cohesion Policy) and is currently a lecturer for the postgraduate course on EU Economics at the Faculty of Economics in Zagreb, as well as Business Academy Experta on the subject of EC Cohesion Policy. She has been engaged as an expert on a number of projects supported by the EC, UNDP, World Bank, ILO and Croatian central and regional government institutions related to regional development and policy as well as evaluation of development programmes.
Vassilis Monastiriotis is Senior Lecturer in the Political Economy of South Eastern Europe at the European Institute at the London School of Economics, UK. He is currently Director of the LSE Research unit on Southeast Europe (LSEE) and Research Affiliate at the Hellenic Observatory and the Spatial Economics Research Centre (SERC). He is co-editor of Spatial Economic Analysis and a Committee Member of the Regional Science Association International (British & Irish Section). His research covers a range of topics from labour economics and employment relations to regional economics, economic growth and macroeconomic policy. His publications include articles in the Journal of Regional Science, Regional Studies, Empirical Economics, Review of Development Economics, and others. In 2008 he received the Moss Madden Memorial Medal in Regional Science.
Although Montenegro enjoyed rapid economic growth in the period preceding the onset of the global economic crisis, the process of economic transformation that took place over the previous decade led to severe deindustrialization of the less developed North East region of the country. In this region, most of the local wood-processing factories closed down in the early 2000s, leading to the paradox of widespread unemployment and abandoned factories amid an area of abundant forest resources. International aid projects funded by the EU and bilateral donors have sought to revive the prospects of the region but with little success. The region benefitted little from the pre-crisis economic boom that took place from 2004 to 2008, which was mainly based on a large inflow of foreign direct investment (FDI) to the Coastal region. The North East region has failed to attract new foreign investment in green field development, and has remained underdeveloped with poor infrastructure and regional disparities within the country having widened.Having adopted a very open neoliberal economic policy in the 2000s, Montenegro was severely affected by the global economic crisis creating a difficult economic climate for regional development policies. Real GDP fell by an estimated 5.7% in 2009, with a relatively weak recovery in 2010.
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