Summary: | More than twenty years after the collapse of the former eastern bloc, cities in central-eastern Europe are nowadays unevenly integrated to the new liberal economic system in which they are now likely to evolve. This integration was, on one hand, subject to former communist heritages and even to the previous period, and on the other hand subject to the new processes directly inherited from the new economic logic such as globalization. Network analysis of multinational firms in this area of the world can be useful in underlining different mechanisms directly issued from these logics. An empirical and comparative approach is adopted to catch and explain this phenomenon of integration of cities in Central-Eastern Europe to the world. It reveals the weight of Western Europe in the internationalization of the economy of the cities of East Central Europe (including Kiev), facing a Russian influence limited in terms of number of companies. The positions of the East Central European cities are equivalent with respect to their intense subsidiarity to foreign firms. Besides, their reciprocal trade is very limited, showing little consistency in terms of exchange of multinational companies.
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