Negotiating Global, Regional, and National Forces: Foreign Investment in Slovenia

Abstract

The article examines foreign investment in Slovenia to study the interplay between global investment flows, pressures from regional associations, and national protectionist efforts and resistance to foreign ownership. Using content analysis of policies and parliamentary debates, the author investigates how the newly established Slovenian state institutionalizes its attitudes toward the participation of foreigners in the national economy in the official policies adopted to regulate foreign investment. With case studies of foreign investment transactions, the author illustrates how foreign investment occurs in practice. The author finds that the Slovenian state officials negotiate the domestic and European Union pressures by sanctioning the decoupling between formal policies and economic practice. At the organizational level, economic actors involved in transactions negotiate the global and local interests by exploiting institutional nontransparency and differentiating between transaction partners on the basis of preexistent social relations and cultural affinities. Paying attention to the intersection between global, regional, and national forces, this study uncovers the social, cultural, and political bases of economic processes and the agency of local actors in responding to global and regional pressures.