ABSTRACT

Amidst doubts that it still has transformative power to drive institutional change in the Balkans, structuralists claim that the ‘neoliberal’ European Union (EU) helps enable ‘land grabbing’ by driving the region to liberalize land governing institutions. Based on our field research in urban contexts we reject this supposed causal relationship. We examined the processes that enabled two recent high-stakes land deals in the capitals of Serbia and Bosnia–Herzegovina, both Balkan countries seeking EU accession. Using the Institutional Analysis and Development framework, we find the EU’s transformative power absent in both cases. Instead, we observe national and local elites opaquely facilitating hand-picked investments and cooperating to change urban land-use rules. We thus argue that endogenous drivers, like the possibility of expanding rent-seeking in situations of unequal information access, better explain the Balkan land deal phenomenon; and that the generalization that the ‘neoliberal’ EU helps drive land grabbing needs serious reconsideration.

摘要

在对它仍然具有推动巴尔干体制变革的变革力量感到怀疑的同时，结构主义者声称，“新自由主义”欧洲联盟（EU）通过推动该地区放开土地管理机构来帮助实现“抢地”。根据我们在城市环境中的实地研究，我们拒绝这种假定的因果关系。我们研究了在塞尔维亚和波斯尼亚－黑塞哥维那首府这两个巴尔干国家都寻求加入欧盟的过程中促成的两项近期高风险土地交易的过程。使用制度分析和发展框架，我们发现在两种情况下都没有欧盟的变革力量。取而代之的是，我们观察到国家和地方的精英人士不透明地促进了手工挑选的投资，并合作改变了城市的土地使用规则。因此，我们认为内生驱动因素 就像在信息获取不平等的情况下扩大寻租的可能性一样，可以更好地解释巴尔干土地交易现象；对于“新自由主义”欧盟有助于推动土地掠夺的概括，需要认真考虑。