Network Ties and the Politics of Renationalization: Embeddedness,Political-Business Relations,and Renationalization in Post-Milosevic Serbia

Abstract

Based on an original large-N data set of Serbian firms privatized between 2002 and 2011, and qualitative evidence, this article applies survival modeling to network data to analyze the political foundations of renationalization. I build on embeddedness scholarship and hypothesize that renationalization is influenced by varying patterns of embeddedness of firms in political and ownership networks. In contrast with expectations of the state capture literature, I find that politically connected firms are more likely to be renationalized than non-politicized ones, whereas firms owned by domestic corporate owners are less likely to be renationalized than those owned by non-corporate owners. I theorize my findings as the logic of extraction, showing that renationalization in politically connected firms happens either as an unintended consequence of extraction or of predation, and as the logic of reciprocity, which demonstrates that domestic corporate owners are more likely to avoid renationalization because they can offer favors to political parties.