Taking back control: comprador bankers and managerial developmentalism in Poland

Abstract

With rare exception, political economists assume that developmental policies and developmental alliances between states and business result from top-down, state cooption or coercion of business. They also do not expect the subsidiaries of multinational corporations (MNCs) and their local, non-expat, managersthe 'compradors' to press for developmentalism in host countries. Based on process tracing of Polish economic policy since the 2008 global financial crisis (GFC), I argue that, in Poland's dependent market economy and FDI-led growth regime, 'comprador' bankers coopted state actors into renationalizing foreign-owned Polish banks and into reforming development institutions to support indigenous firms' expansion. Moreover, comprador bankers operationalized new industrial policies for which state actors, indigenous entrepreneurs and 'compradors' simultaneously started pressing in the 2010s. Comprador bankers' motives were their frustration at their weak managerial autonomy in foreign-headquartered MNCs and their concerns about the negative macro-economic implications of their parent banks' attempts to capture their Polish subsidiaries' excess liquidity during the GFC in order to improve their own liquidity positions.

Varieties of Dependency, Varieties of Populism: Neoliberalism and the Populist Countermovements in the Visegrád Four

“…Analysing the Polish developmental state, King and Sznajder (2006) and Bruszt and Karas (2020) highlighted the role of dense networks of public institutions dedicated to nurturing domestic enterprises. Figures such as Donald Tusk and Jan Bielecki, head of the Tusk government's Economic Council, supported the idea that the state should help the formation of national champions and protect firms from hostile takeover bids, and promoted national ownership in the banking sector (Rae 2013;Naczyk 2021).…”

“…As a consequence, nationalist populists cannot claim a monopoly over representing the interests of national capitalists in Poland. Although economic patriotism continued after the populist turn, it is not a prerogative of PiS: the main oppositional party, Donald Tusk's Civic Platform (PO), has excellent connections to national capitalists, who were successfully pushing for developmental state policies already before the populist PiS government (Naczyk 2021).…”

The Two Faces of the ‘Global Right’: Revolutionary Conservatives and National-Conservatives

“…And, even though the public philosophies we focus on do not offer any straightforward economic ‘recipes’, it is only the second lineage that has developed a syncretic perspective on how to achieve economic growth and what to finance from growth. This perspective, at times referred to as ‘social nativism’ (Piketty, 2020) draws inspiration from East Asian developmental states and has travelled via the Global Right to become an important ingredient of a new conservative socio-economic policy paradigm (Bluhm and Varga, 2020; Buzogány and Varga, 2021; Naczyk, 2021; Orenstein and Bugarič, 2021).…”

“…The state is the key actor in these processes because of its spending power on infrastructure (energy provision, transport) and military projects to boost demand for industrial products. Mateusz Morawiecki, PiS Minister for Economic Development and later Polish Prime-Minister, would seek to implement these ideas under the heading of ‘Re-Polonizing’ his country’s economy from 2016 on (Miszerak and Rohac, 2017; Morawiecki, 2016, 2017; Naczyk, 2021). Morawiecki, as well as Orbán and his economic policy experts Matolcsy and László György have repeatedly emphasised the importance of East Asia, and China in particular, not only as a strategic partner and investor, but as the key inspiration source for socio-economic policies in which states take a leading role in the economy (György, 2017; Morawiecki, 2016).…”

Post-Neoliberalism and External Financial Liberalization: Comparing Left-Wing and Right-Wing Populism

“…9 After Correa's presidency, the Proud and Sovereign Homeland Alliance adopted a social-democrat position, leading him to create a new left-wing populist party (Union for Hope). 10 Even though the retreat of foreign banks began under the Civic Platform government, the takeovers were justified as technical, case-by-case decisions (Naczyk 2014(Naczyk , 2021. Pedro Perfeito da Silva…”