Particularizing the Global: Reception of Foreign Direct Investment in Slovenia

Abstract

Exploring the relationship between global forces and local practices, this article examines the reception of global investment flows in an East European transition country, Slovenia. Using content analysis of legal regulations and policies, the article investigates how global pressures impact the official foreign investment policy regime in Slovenia. Examples of foreign investment transactions illustrate economic practice. The analysis shows that yielding to the universalizing pressures of neoliberalism creates convergence in official foreign investment policies. In practice, however, economic actors involved in foreign investment transactions resist and particularize global processes on the basis of their network ties, political alliances and cultural affinities. Overall, the study emphasizes the social and political embeddedness of economic processes and substantiates how the decoupling of formal policies and local practices sustains the coexistence of uniformity and diversity.