Foreign direct investment (FDI) as indicator of regime type: contemporary Serbian – Turkish relations.

This paper investigates the relationship between regime type and foreign policy through the observational lens of the Serbian – Turkish bilateral relationship starting from 2009 to 2018. The approach was chosen to analyse sources of authoritarian power at the points of convergence between domestic and foreign policy, in a realm free from EU conditionality and the push towards liberal democracy. The article argues that investigating foreign direct investment (FDI) in hybrid regimes dependant on foreign capital provides more granular insight into the wielding and consolidation of incumbent power. An empirical examination of the mutual economic relations and the trajectory of the Turkish factory in Serbia indicate that, while Turkish FDI are of smaller financial worth than investments of EU actors, they are highly valuable in qualitatively portraying the complexity of political power. The paper employs the concept of hybridity more holistically to incorporate the regime ambivalence across the entire trio of politics, economy, and society, thus providing simultaneous insight into the embeddedness of informal mechanisms throughout formal institutions, the fusion of economic and political authorities, and the personalization of political power in Serbia. Process-tracing was the primary method of analysis.. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]