An Exploratory Study on International R&D Strategies of Chinese Companies in Europe

We here present a study that arms the reader with various discussion points on the research and development (R&D) foreign direct investment (FDI) strategies of Chinese multinational corporations (MNCs) in Europe. Through archival research and interviews, we adopted a multi‐case study approach to investigate how significant are these investments and how relevant do they become for the local innovation systems. Our analysis shows that the establishment of R&D centers, and more importantly the evolution of these centers, does not coincide with what international business theories would have predicted. The Chinese MNCs considered entered Europe in a variety of forms, guided by various learning goals. However, we found evidence of the growing tendency of these companies to insulate themselves from local partners and to engage in less explorative and more exploitative R&D activity, adapting technologies developed elsewhere for the European market, gaining access to good indigenous labor and technologies rather than to local partnerships.     

Europe in crisis and the effects on the countries of Balkan region,especially for Albania

This paper basically discusses the financial crisis that is taking place in Europe. There is a fear that this economic crisis will take hold of Europe if it is not controlled. Europe is one of the biggest economies of the world so almost all the countries over the globe are also having a threat of facing the financial crisis. This paper also looks for the opportunities that the Balkan countries will have due to this financial crisis in Europe. The fall in the economy of Europe has also affected the economic conditions of the countries of Balkan region especially Albania and the GDP values of these countries have decreased.     

Evidence-Based Policy Research to Inform the ENP: Five Recommendations for Europe and its Neighbours

The September 2014 referendum is a milestone in Scotland’s history. After 307 years of union with England and a 15-year experience with devolution, Scottish nationalism is within reach of its ultimate goal. Independence would be consensual and Scotland and the rest of the UK would retain multiple links. The EU dimension looms large in the debate and is entangled with the UK’s own review of its membership. Scotland’s referendum is part of a wider trend seeing other ‘stateless nations’ in the democratic world pursuing independence. Even if opinion polls indicate voters will likely reject secession, Scotland’s experience holds important lessons for the wider world.     

Tony Crosland as I Knew Him

Anthony Crosland is the outstanding revisionist in the history of the British Labour party and is often said to have been its most influential thinker since the Second World War. His unusual personality is evaluated in relation not only to his political ideas but also to his personal career.     

The politics of bank ownership and currency policies in Central and Eastern Europe

This paper argues that state-owned, private domestic, and foreign banks have different preferences for exchange rate policies. More specifically, I posit that governments will be less willing and able to maintain fixed exchange rate arrangements in closed banking systems dominated by government-owned banks than in globalized banking systems with a large presence of foreign banks. The article’s principal claim rests on the notion that ownership structure of the banking system empowers different types of banks, affects their interests, and shapes the responsiveness of government politicians to bank demands. The bank ownership types further influence the stability of the domestic monetary system and financial regulation that are of paramount importance in the determination of exchange rate regimes. An empirical investigation of data on exchange rate regimes for 25 Central and Eastern European countries provides strong support for the theory. The results are robust to alternative estimation techniques, instrumental variable analysis, and the inclusion of several economic and political variables.     

‘The battlefield is in Brussels’: Islamophobia in the Visegrád Four in its global context

ABSTRACT

A common popular and scholarly opinion of Islamophobia in the so-called ‘Visegrád Four’ or ‘V4’ (Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary) sees it as caused by circumstances unique to Eastern Europe. Specifically to blame, it is alleged, is a distinctive local history of intolerance, especially antisemitism, and the fact that under socialism these countries were exempt from the post-war soul-searching that took place in Western Europe. Kalmar’s paper, instead, decentres Islamophobia in the V4 by considering it less as a limited regional phenomenon, and more in terms of how it is linked to Islamophobia in other European Union member states and the United States. As elsewhere, foremost among the conditions that encourage Islamophobia in the V4 is the alienation of certain publics on the periphery, which is an effect of global neoliberal policies. These have generated, along with Islamism and Islamophobia, a reinvented, essentializing discourse of difference between Eastern and Western Europe. In spite of that alleged difference, however, Islamophobic populism in the V4 is not just a regional threat to liberal democracy, but targets all of the European Union and the world.     

Prosecuting high-level corruption in Eastern Europe

Do Eastern European courts effectively constrain politicians and uphold the rule of law? Criminal prosecution of grand (high-level) corruption can further the central principle of equal responsibility under the law by demonstrating that even powerful political actors have to submit to the laws of the land. This article introduces the Eastern European Corruption Prosecution Database, which contains entries for all cabinet ministers (927 in total) who served in a government that held office in one of seven post-Communist Eastern European countries since the late 1990s. The systematic data collection reveals that Bulgaria, Romania and Macedonia consistently indict more ministers than Croatia, the Czech Republic, and Poland; Slovakia has barely indicted anyone. We aim to start a research agenda by formulating hypotheses about which countries will see more corruption prosecutions and which ministers' characteristics would make them more likely to face the court. We use the database to begin testing these hypotheses and find some evidence for several associations. We find no strong evidence that EU conditionality or membership raises the profile of the grand corruption issue or leads to more indictments. Party politics seems to affect the frequency of corruption indictments more than the structure and behavior of legal institutions. Indictment rates are lower when a former Communist party controls the government and individual ministers from junior coalition partners are more vulnerable to indictment than other ministers. The existence of a specialized anti-corruption prosecution or a more independent judiciary do not seem to lead to the indictment of more ministers on corruption charges. Finally, we discuss avenues of future research that our database opens, both for the analysis of country-level and individual-level variation.     

Self-protection in Greece: sticking with groups,communicating, protesting,and fighting

Despite the international community’s responsibility to protect (R2P) mandate, we are years away from effective international enforcement mechanisms. It is therefore important that we better understand and seek to support local capacities for self-protection. Migrants and refugees in Greece have shown us four central ways they cope with insecure environments. They stick together in groups, communicate warnings of danger, protest when conditions are threatening, and fight when all else fails. This practical note offers three recommendations on how to support the capacity of displaced people to protect themselves.     

Public opinion polarisation and protest behaviour

Does an increasing divide in normative notions within a population influence citizens’ political protest behaviour? This article explores whether public opinion polarisation stimulates individuals to attend lawful demonstrations. In line with relative deprivation theory, it is argued that in an environment of polarisation, individuals’ normative notions are threatened, increasing the probability that they will actively participate in the political decision‐making process. Using the European Social Survey from the period 2002–2014 and focusing on subnational regions, multilevel analyses are conducted. Thereby a new index to measure public opinion polarisation is introduced. Depending on the issue, empirical results confirm the effect of polarisation. While average citizens are not motivated to demonstrate over the issue of whether people from other countries are a cultural threat, they are motivated by the issues of reducing inequality and of homosexuality. The article goes on to examine in a second step whether ideological extremism makes individuals more susceptible to environmental opinion polarisation. Findings show that members of the far left are more likely to protest when their social environment is divided over the issue of income inequality. In contrast, members of the far right are motivated by rising polarisation regarding homosexuality. In sum, citizens become mobilised as their beliefs and values are threatened by public opinion polarisation.