Foreign direct investments (FDIs) in the service sector are widely attributed an important role in bringing more skill-intensive activities into the Visegrád Four (V4). This region—comprising Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia—relied heavily on FDIs in manufacturing, which was...

This article investigates the influence of the European Union (EU) on legal resources available to labour to tackle labour market challenges in central and east European countries after their accession to the EU in 2004 and 2007. Its conclusion is that the EU’s impact has been complex and...

This article starts by dealing with the methodological problems involved in analysing the state in post-socialism and proposes a solution that is subsequently employed in the analysis. It then describes the transformation of the state in the Czech Republic after the fall of Communism in 1989. It...

This paper analyses the transformation of elites in the Visegrád Four countries (namely the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia). Drawing on a process-tracing analysis, it argues that the emergence of foreign-led economies in the late 1990s was intertwined with political processes in...