Regulatory Categorization and Arbitrage: How Daily Fantasy Sports Companies Navigated Regulatory Categories Before and After Legalized Gambling

This article uses the context of daily fantasy sports (DFS) to analyze how companies use strategic categorization in regulatory arbitrage. Recent actions by two leaders in the DFS industry, DraftKings and FanDuel, provide an ideal context to study this issue. DraftKings and FanDuel categorized themselves differently to different audiences at different times in a manner that evaded categorization as an illegal gambling activity, only to then dominate the sports betting market after the Supreme Court's decision in Murphy v. NCAA. We examine how this type of strategic categorization, which we call “fluid categorization,” raises important questions for regulators and others concerned with regulatory arbitrage. We also explore how fluid categorization provides lessons for other businesses. While this article has broad implications for the sports gambling marketplace, it also contributes to meaningful discourse for the broader business community, as its findings are relevant to industries beyond DFS that offer gray market products and seek to fight categorical labels until there is a reclassification event.     

Power, sovereignty, and the great republic: Anglo-American diplomatic relations in the era of the Civil War

Historians have tended to view the American Civil War (1861-65) as a milestone in Anglo-American relations. It marked the transfer of dominance from Great Britain to the United States in the Western Hemisphere. As Great Britain backed the losing side overwhelming American power brought about a British withdrawal. This article argues that this is a very oversimplified interpretation of their relations in this period. Britain did not intervene in the Civil War because it was not good policy; throughout the British relied on deterrence because, save for the war years, American power could not be translated into military power. The British secured most of their policy objectives thanks to a combination of prudent and conciliatory conduct, and a desire to avoid war, but also due to calm resolution that belied belligerent and sometimes outlandish public statements. British leaders have often been criticized for hypocrisy and double standards, but such criticisms seem unfair. Their belief that the Civil War was futile resulted from a humanitarian desire to halt the killing. It should be remembered that although the nineteenth century witnessed many local conflicts, great wars seem to have disappeared. It therefore appeared to be a laudable objective to attempt to arbitrate in what turned out to be the greatest war after 1815. It is also important to recall that Europeans were less interested in this conflict than the Americans themselves, and that preoccupation with affairs closer to home led to hasty and erroneous judgements.     

The Mediterranean and the Global Sustainable Development Goals

Are global development initiatives such as the Sustainable Development Goals (agreed in September 2015) in any way relevant to a crisis-ridden region such as the Mediterranean? The SDGs are much more expansive than the MDGs; they cover a range of socio-economic and political issues, which certainly are of acute relevance to the Mediterranean. It is noteworthy that states from the region were not strongly involved in the formulation of the SDGs. Pan-regional institutions such as the Union for the Mediterranean (UfM) could derive a new lease of life from leading efforts to implement them (in particular goals related to the environment, energy, water and infrastructure). However, the UfM remains a weak institution. There are commonalities between the EU’s development policy and the SDG norms, but there are also many elements of EU economic policy that diverge sharply from the global ideals. The SDGs are an effort at global norm promotion which are unlikely to affect much of the Mediterranean, at least while the conflicts continue.     

The European Commission and fiscal governance reform: a strategic actor?

The intensification of the financial and economic crisis in Europe has added a new impetus to the debate over the possibilities for securing supranational fiscal integration within the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). Since the literature on the European Union’s response to the crisis is dominated by the study of intergovernmental politics, this article considers the previously neglected role of the Commission. A framing analysis of the Commission’s crisis discourse is operationalised here, which is supplemented by interviews with senior officials located in the Directorate General for Economic and Financial Affairs (DG ECFIN) during key phases of the crisis. It is found that a supranational reform agenda was never internalised by the Commission. Instead, the Commission acted strategically by framing the crisis around intergovernmental fiscal discipline. These findings suggest that, in line with the ‘new intergovernmentalist’ thesis, supranational institutions themselves may not be as ‘hard-wired’ towards supranationalism as is often assumed.     

An alternative approach to explaining political popularity

Previous empirical work on the relationship between political popularity and economic events has either not attempted to model the alternative policies of the different parties, or has modelled them in a rather simplistic manner. It has also typically assumed that voters are backward-looking in contrast to recent work on expectations theory. An approach is outlined which is based on a forward-looking comparison of the parties and incorporates the effect of news. An alternative derivation relying on the evaluation of the stock of goodwill built up for each party is also suggested. Empirical evidence from the Gallup opinion poll provides some support for these hypotheses.     

Book reviews

Michael Cox, US Foreign Policy After the Cold War; Superpower Without a Mission?, (Pinter, London 1995). 148pp. ISBN 1–85567–221–9.

Philip John Davies (ed), An American Quarter Century: US Politics From Vietnam to Clinton, (Manchester University Press, Manchester 1995). 279pp. ISBN 0–7190–4514–2.

Goran Therborn, European Modernity and Beyond: The Trajectory of European Societies, (Sage, London 1995). 403pp. ISBN 8039 8934 2.

John McGarry and Brendan O'Leary, Explaining Northern Ireland, (Blackwell, Oxford 1995). 535pp. ISBN 0–631–18349–3.

Jerzy Szacki, Liberalism After Communism, (Central European Press, Budapest 1995). 216pp. ISBN 1–85866–015–7 (hb), 1–85866–016–5 (pb).

Janusz Bugajski, Nations in Turmoil: Conflict and Cooperation in Eastern Europe, second edition, (Westview Press, Boulder 1995). 265pp. ISBN 0–8133–2351–7 (hb), 0–8133–2350–9 (pb).

Jeremy Lester, Modern Tsars and Princes: The Struggle for Hegemony in Russia, (Verso, London 1995). 320pp. ISBN 1–85984–039–6 (pb).     

Image analysis of gunshot residue on entry wounds: I – The technique and preliminary study

An automated image analysis (IA) technique has been developed to obtain a measure of the amount (i.e. number and area) of gunshot residue (GSR) particles within and around a gunshot wound. Sample preparation and IA procedures were standardised to improve the reproducibility of the IA measurements of GSR. Measurements of GSR from test firings into goat hide were enhanced by staining the barium and lead components present on the skin sections with Alizarin Red S. The amount of GSR detected on the stained skin sections was compared with backscatter electron micrographs of the same sections. The differences were deemed to be insignificant when the variability in the repeated test firings were taken into consideration. Preliminary results indicated that the decreasing relationship between firing range and the amount of GSR deposited was non-linear, and that for firing ranges of up to 20 cm the amount of GSR deposited from repeated shots fired from the same distance was highly variable.     

World Cricket as a Postcolonial International Society: IR Meets the History of Sport

This article brings together the English School literature, postcolonial approaches to culture, the historical sociology of sport, and IR's own tentative engagement with sport to argue that world cricket constitutes a sui generis postcolonial international society in the sporting sector. The international society tradition within IR has been criticised for its failure to take sufficient note of the history of imperialism, and contributions from postcolonial scholarship can provide a necessary corrective here. However, the adoption of cricket in colonial societies involved a complex mixture of acceptance of and resistance to elements of British imperial culture, as has been documented in the work of some historical sociologists of sport and of philosophers of cricket such as C.L.R. James and Ashis Nandy. Contemporary world cricket is an arena in which the former imperial centre and a number of postcolonial states compete with each other within a framework of quasi-legal provisions (the Laws of Cricket), associated normative expectations (“The Spirit of Cricket”), and an international/transnational sporting organisation (the International Cricket Council). The concept of a geographically (but not regionally) limited, historically specific, and sectoral international society therefore still has some purchase here. This sphere is currently being shaped not by a clash between imperial values and postcolonial resistance, but by tension between the routinisation of international cricket and a shift of wealth and power within the game towards India. World cricket can be characterised as a sphere of non-violent sporting competition which may, perhaps, function as a source of international civility in relations between regions of the world influenced by British imperialism.     

A confirmatory factor analysis of a four-factor model of adolescent concerns

Based on considerable previous research, a four-factor model of adolescent concerns was proposed. Data on concerns were collected from 439 adolescents together with demographic data. A hierarchy of concerns was established based on mean ratings, and sex and age differences were reported. The data were factor analyzed into four principal components and were tested for the goodness of fit to the proposed model using linear structural relationships (LISREL) techniques by the method of maximum likelihood. The data fit the model very well (goodness of fit index=.958). The implications of these findings for further research and theories of adolescent development are discussed generally.Received his B.Sc and M. A. from the University of British Columbia, and his Ph.D. from the University of Alberta. His main interests are in development, and in quantitative methods in psychology and education.Graduate student currently completing a master's degree in counseling psychology. His main interest is in working with adolescents.