State, capitalism and infrastructure-led development: A multi-scalar analysis of the Belgrade-Budapest railway construction

Abstract

The 2008 financial crisis allowed for the rising power of China to expand deeper into more (semi-)peripheral regions: in the past decade, the role of China and Chinese SOEs has increased markedly in Eastern Europe. This has been in step with China's geopolitical and geoeconomic expansion, hallmarked by the Belt and Road Initiative; the reconstruction of the Belgrade-Budapest railway line constitutes one of its flagship projects in Europe. This paper aims to explore the complexities of the current reconfiguration of state-capital nexus through an empirical analysis of this particular development project; in doing so, we hope to contribute to the scholarly debate about the heuristic use of ‘new’ state capitalism in three specific ways. First, instead of conceptualizing the state as a territorially confined power container, we propose to scrutinize the state-capital nexus from a multi-scalar and relational perspective. Second, we claim that the study of funding, financing and governing of large-scale infrastructural investments is a fruitful analytical entry point to theorize the changing relations between ‘state’ and ‘capital’. Finally, we argue that from the perspective of contemporary shifts in global power structures, the emergence of state capitalist modalities in the Eastern peripheries of Europe should be understood as a ‘co-production’ of the geopolitical rivalry and elite capture of domains of infrastructure. In terms of methodology, in order to show how state-capital relations are produced, enacted and redrawn, the study builds on the analysis of media sources, policy documents, company networks, semi-structured interviews, and non-participant observations.

Remaking civil society under authoritarian capitalism: The case of the Orbán regime’s Hungarian Academy of Arts

“…First, the general cultural politics and policy of the Orbán-regime have been recently examined by several scholars (Kristóf, 2017;Barna et al, 2018;Bonet & Zamorano, 2020;Nagy & Szarvas, 2021). This article joins the thread in the literature that emphasizes how the regime's cultural politics should be studied as an integral part of its comprehensive restructuring of the internal and external dependencies from financial policy (Karas, 2022), to housing (Gagyi et al, 2021), from labor-relations (Meszmann & Fedyuk, 2020) to its integration into global value chains (Szabó & Jelinek, 2023). Altogether this shift can be described as a rise of state capitalism in which authoritarian measures serve capital accumulation and national cultural apparatuses of both elite and popular culture-such as the HAA or the subsidy of national pop music-are prioritized.…”

Captured by Political Power: More-Than-Neoliberal Urban Development and Planning in Post-Socialist Hungary

“…The interests of political power and clientelist/patrimonial relations are highlighted, and we also refer to these in the Hungarian case. By pointing out the more-than-neoliberal elements, we argue that illiberal politics and neopatrimonial political and economic relations should be taken more seriously (Szelényi & Csillag, 2015) rather than assuming domination by the capitalist class in a neoliberal or by the domestic capitalists in a state-capitalist framework (Scheiring, 2020;Szabó & Jelinek, 2023). We consider the above theoretical positioning important because many path-determining development projects are irrational and harmful, not just socially and environmentally but also economically.…”

“…Besides Chinese companies, the subcontractors of the constructions are closely related to the ruling party (Szabó & Jelinek, 2023, p. 1294. It is very hard to find the economic rationale behind the project, as the increase in railway traffic will simply not be substantial enough, and the railway line in Hungary is far from larger cities and industrial plants, while the construction is spectacularly overpriced compared to the Serbian section (A2).…”

“…Framing the project with a simple financial rationality as a way to gain further credit from China and decrease financial dependence imposed by Western capital (Szabó & Jelinek, 2023, p. 1295) overlooks the fact that the EU transfers and loans would have been much cheaper for the Hungarian budget. However, the EU has political and civil rights conditions in exchange for the money, while China does not.…”

“…However, the EU has political and civil rights conditions in exchange for the money, while China does not. The Chinese economic rationality can be the use of overcapacity and the conquest of EU markets (Szabó & Jelinek, 2023, p. 1288). Yet, the apparent inability to overcome the differences between Chinese and European technical standards in railway safety systems seems to be rather bad PR (A3).…”