ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic as paradigmatic cases of dependent market economies (DMEs), whose institutional underpinnings are critical for the set-up of their climate regimes. Nolke and Vliegenthart have convincingly suggested introducing a new category to the varieties of capitalism (VoC) framework, namely DMEs. DMEs are, of course, not the only economies receiving foreign direct investment (FDI). For some time, China was the most prominent destination for FDI. For the DMEs, in contrast, there is neither a willingness to control foreign capital, nor a strong enough central political power base to restrict FDI to a specific national institutional setting. The determinants of FDI have been different across countries, and the majority of these dynamics are beyond the scope of environmental policy. It is important to note that within DMEs FDI penetration has been impressive in various sectors, including those that are only indirectly related to environmental issues.
