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Statecraft strategies and housing financialization at the periphery: Post-socialist trajectories in Russia and Poland

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 November 2023

MIrjam Büdenbender  and
Andrea Lagna
MIrjam Büdenbender
Affiliation:
Deutscher Bundestag, Germany
Andrea Lagna*
Affiliation:
Loughborough University, UK
*
Corresponding author: Andrea Lagna, School of Business and Economics, Loughborough University, Loughborough LE11 3TU, United Kingdom. Email: A.Lagna@lboro.ac.uk.
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Abstract

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A new literature on housing and financialization has emerged in recent years, but scholars have yet to examine how political actors shape national trajectories of housing financialization. In this article, we address this shortcoming by examining the cases of Russia and Poland in the 1990-2018 period. We argue that in both contexts political elites implemented a radical market-oriented reshaping of housing finance. However, by pursuing distinct statecraft strategies and modes of integrating the domestic economy into global markets, Russian and Polish political elites created two divergent trajectories of housing financialization. Russian political elites pursued patrimonial statecraft strategies and a mode of global economic integration based on raw material exports. The Putin administration channeled revenues from raw material exports into the securitization-based housing finance system and used this infrastructure as an instrument of hegemonic power. In doing so, the Russian government shielded homeowners from exposure to financial risk. In contrast, Polish political elites pursued liberal statecraft strategies and a mode of global economic integration based on foreign capital inflows. Polish political parties therefore enabled foreign banks to dominate the housing finance system and sell foreign currency mortgages, which exposed homeowners to considerable financial risk. In light of these findings we call for further research into the political factors that shape the process of housing financialization, both in the post-socialist space and beyond.

Keywords

Housingfinancializationfinancial innovationstatecraftpost-socialist capitalism
Type
Article
Information
Finance and Society , Volume 5 , Issue 2 , 2019 , pp. 105 - 125
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits noncommercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
© 2019 The Author(s)

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