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The main aim of the paper is to classify the types of capitalism in the Balkan states in the context of the European post-socialist countries and identify the principal strengths and weaknesses of institutional organization in these countries. The paper uses Amable's approach, which is supplemented by the influence of the political environment. The paper identifies two different capitalist clusters in the Balkan area: market economies (Bulgaria, Croatia, Montenegro and Romania) and hybrid economies (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia and Serbia). The Balkan countries are compared with the other post-socialist economies, the EU-8 and post-soviet countries. Within the Balkan States, only Croatia and Montenegro are approaching the EU-8 economies, while on the other hand, Albania has some characteristic in common with the Caucasian republics. In general, the Balkan States achieve better results than the post-soviet states; however, there are some common weaknesses: low quality of the education system and inefficient financial system, and rigid labour market in Albania, Croatia and Romania and underdeveloped political system in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The aim of the paper is to analyse the impact of political instability on inflow of foreign direct investments (FDI) in transition economies (CEE, Balkan and Post-Soviet countries). Regarding standard indexes of political instability, there is a shortage of data within the selected sample of countries. Therefore, we propose alternative proxies for political instability. Furthermore, we distinguish between two types of political instability being omitted in thematic literature: elite (minority or weak governments) and non-elite (violent protests, civil wars, coups). The paper provides two-step empirical analysis: correlation analysis and regression models using standard OLS. Both analyses compare the effect of selected proxies for political instability on inflow of FDI and FDI per capita. In summary, it is not possible to prove the effect of political instability on inflow of FDI in transition countries in unambiguous way. Despite it, a few statistically significant variables seem to be perspective for future research; subindex Political Stability within Governance Matters by the Word Bank and Group Grievance within Failed State Index by the Fund for Peace (non-elite); Herfindahl Index Government and a dummy for (non)presence of parliament election (elite).

Within the context of the continuing integration process in Europe, this paper addresses the question of whether policies in the EU should head towards autonomy, coordination or harmonization. Taking the path dependence effect into account, it is the authors' opinion that Europe has gone too far in its integration process to be able to continue with policies being fully under the competences of individual member countries. However, the habitual question still arises: does fiscal policy need to be harmonized to a level comparable to monetary policy as these two policies, necessarily, complement each other? This paper argues that it does not. There are three main arguments discussed. Firstly, the authors build on the theory of fiscal federalism. Secondly, there are significantly different regimes of welfare states and extents of social policies among European countries, which strongly determine the character of public finance. And thirdly, the tax systems across Europe are also highly divergent, with many features of continuing tax competition.