Southeast Europe’s emerging growth advocates: Domestic firms, technology and economic governance in institutionally weak states

2026-07-22

SEEGROW proposes a two-year fellowship at the Faculty of Economics, University of Belgrade in Serbia with a five-month secondment to the Faculty of Economics, University of Banja Luka in Bosnia & Herzegovina. The project is empirically grounded in Serbia and Bosnia because it is interested in countries with weak and captured institutions in Europe’s Southeast periphery. SEEGROW tests the following premise: As information and communication technologies (ICT) offer new international opportunities for domestic small and medium firms with industrial skills but little capital, these economic agents engage with these new forces, tailor them to their circumstances, and get empowered by them, which reduces the negative impact of weak formal governance structures on the countries’ overall innovation and growth. The project engages with political economy, institutional economics, management and collective action and governance literatures to study agency of these newly emerging growth advocates. Its key objective is to understand the extent to which these small economic agents are contributing to the reshaping of the rules of economic governance from the bottom-up in the context of state capture. SEEGROW thus challenges the conventional wisdom that state-level institutional reform is the sole game changer for small economic actors who are trapped in the status quo of institutional weakness. In terms of outputs, the project will generate three peer-reviewed scientific articles. In addition, it will be promoted via international academic conferences, an academic workshop, the university website, policy briefs and media. SEEGROW will also contribute to the agenda of enhancing research awareness and capacities in the social sciences in EU accession countries.

Serbia

2026-02-15