Environmental Services and Competition: A Global Perspective

Competition theory has been poorly applied in infrastructure sectors characterized by joined-up physical networks, such as water, sanitation and electricity. Crude tendering mechanisms have been used to promote competition, resulting in unstable contracts. Meanwhile, competition issues are hardly recognized, or are even suppressed in the non-networked (i.e. not yet connected) parts of these sectors. The difference between the networked and non-networked sectors within a given service is arguably as important as that between the different services, such as water and electricity.
Competition has been seen as being fostered by liberalizing trade and this has raised hopes and fears among protagonists and opponents, respectively. In this context, the impact of the World Trade Organization's General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) on environmental services has been slight and the main contribution to be made by competition policy could prove to be at the micro-level. In that regard, it may be more helpful to refer to de-monopolization rather than competition.     

New Insights into Coalition Negotiations—The Case of German Government Formation

Research on coalition negotiations after general elections in parliamentary systems usually focuses on the parties’ utility maximization as corporate actors. However, the most recent process of government formation after the German general election in 2017 followed a different type of logic and led to an outcome unlike that of other coalition negotiations. Regarding policy seeking, office seeking, and vote seeking, the outcomes of both the exploratory talks between Christlich Demokratische Union (CDU)/Christlich-Soziale Union (CSU), Freie Demokratische Partei, and the Greens and the negotiations between CDU/CSU and Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands are at least partly irrational from a cost–benefit analysis. This article examines the formation of Germany’s government in 2017–2018 and reveals the paradoxical outcomes of each phase of the negotiations. Empirical data to underpin the argument stem from interviews with negotiators and statements of direct participants in the formation of the coalition. Instead of the parties’ utility maximization, negotiations were largely dominated by intraparty conflicts, in which individual interests and personal trust rather than partisan unitary programs were most relevant to the negotiation process and outcome. Our work answers the question of why the grand coalition was unexpectedly renewed in the end—contrary to what might be predicted based on established theories of coalition building. The observations and conclusions set forth are of general interest not only for future coalition negotiations in Germany but also for other European parliamentary democracies facing increasing party fragmentation. Most importantly, the analysis yields insights into negotiations undertaken in the absence of rationalist behavior.     

Could lessons have been drawn from New Zealand for England’s NHS reforms?

This article argues that New Zealand (NZ) could be an important case for drawing health system reform lessons from for the English National Health Service. Reasons for this are outlined, including the close similarities between the two countries and their health systems. The article describes the diverging health reform agendas of conservative governments in both countries, noting a series of lessons for England that might have been drawn from NZ. Explanations for the differing reform agendas are then offered.     

At Home with Virginia Woolf

Neither Prudes nor Radicals

Lucy Bland, Banishing the Beast Sexuality and the Early Feminists, New York: The New Press, 1995.

From the Sex War to the Cold War

Carl Rollyson, Rebecca West A Saga of the Century, London: Hodder &; Stoughton, 1995, £20.

Re‐Memorying Modernism

Carol Watts, Dorothy Richardson, Writers and Their Works, Northcote House, 1995, £6.99.

Helen Carr, Jean Rhys, Writers and their Works, Northcote House, 1996, £7.99.

Past Children, Past Selves

Carolyn Steedman, Strange Dislocations. Childhood and the Idea of Human Interiority 1780–1930, London: Virago Press, 1995.

A Bard for All Seasons

Kate Chedgzoy, Shakespeare's Queer Children: Sexual Politics and Contemporary Culture, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995, £12.99 (pbk.).

What Did You Do in the War, Mummy?

Pro Femina. A Review for Women's Writing and Culture, Belgrade: Radio B92.

The Threewomen of Mina Loy

Carolyn Burke, Becoming Modern: The Life of Mina Loy, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $35.

Roger L. Conover (ed.), The Lost Lunar Baedeker. Poems of Mina Loy, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $22.

’As Vulnerable as the Flesh of Roses‘

Doris Lessing, Love, Again, London: HarperCollins/Flamingo, 1996.

Romantic Riches

Mary Shelley, The Novels and Selected Works, 8 vols., general ed. Nora Crook, with Pamela Clemit, consulting ed. Betty T. Bennett, London: Pickering and Chatto, 1996.

Vol. 1: Frankenstein, ed. Nora Crook, introd. Betty T. Bennett

Vol. 2: Matilda, Dramas, Reviews and Essays, Prefaces and Notes, ed. Pamela Clemit

Vol. 3: Valperga, ed. Nora Crook

Vol. 4: The Last Man, ed. Jane Blumberg with Nora Crook

Vol. 5: The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck, ed. Doucet Devin Fischer

Vol. 6: Lodore, ed. Fiona Stafford

Vol. 7: Falkner, ed. Pamela Clemit

Vol. 8: Travel Writing, ed. Jeanne Moskal