The coordination of policy priorities among regional institutions from the Baltic Sea to the Arctic: the institutions – coordination dilemma

We examine the coordination of policy priorities among the Arctic Council, the Barents Euro-Arctic Council, the Council of Baltic Sea States, and the Nordic Council of Ministers. The member states of these groups established these institutions to coordinate their regional cooperation. However, the member states ended up having to coordinate the parallel work of these institutions. This coordination effort influenced their cooperation, creating an institutional coordination dilemma. We analyze how interests, leadership, and identity politics influence this dilemma and how negative, problem-solving, and positive forms of coordination can amend its effects regarding the temporal consistency of policy priorities and their sectoral overlap.     

Populism and the politics of misinformation

ABSTRACT

The proliferation of fake news and of conspiracy theories has coincided with the emergence of the digital media. Although the extensive distribution of misinformation is nothing new, the emergence of online media proved to be especially fertile for conspiratorial populists in transmitting distorted information. Since 2016, conspiracy theories, disguised as news, have spread like a snowstorm across the political scene on both sides of the Atlantic. As I discuss in this paper, this climate has enabled conspiratorial populists to be especially successful in spreading suspicion of established knowledge, which they claim to have been produced by the elite and which is eschewed for its association with the powerful. Alongside the diminished gatekeeping capabilities of the mainstream media, it thus becomes ever more difficult for people to distinguish between factual stories and fictitious news often spread via unscrupulous websites, as both can be presented in the same guise.     

欧洲能否摆脱美国的监护

在欧洲和美国的战略关系中,北约是非常重要的纽带.冷战结束以来,美国坚持强化北约,目的在于继续控制欧洲.欧洲人一直希望在本区域的防务和军事一体化问题上加强合作,建立一支独立的军事力量.在科索沃战争的"催化"作用下,欧洲在共同防务和军事一体化领域迅速达成一致,并进入实施具体规划的阶段.这对欧美关系将产生重大的影响,欧洲人希望摆脱美国 的监护,已经付诸于行动.     

When All Roads Lead to Beijing. Assessing China’s New Silk Road and its Implications for Europe

The Belt and Road, unveiled by President Xi Jinping in late 2013, is China’s most ambitious geo-economic and foreign policy initiative in decades, combining a land-based Silk Road Economic Belt and a sea-based 21st Century Maritime Silk Road which connect China to Europe. With this grandiose initiative, Beijing seeks to tackle industrial overcapacity at home and acquire political influence abroad through investment. Sitting at the end-point of the maritime Silk Road, Southeast Europe and the Mediterranean have been the main focus of investment in infrastructure projects so far. If managed successfully by both sides, China’s Belt and Road could be a great opportunity for a European continent that is still struggling to recover from the crisis. What is urgently needed in Europe is a comprehensive response to China’s new initiative, with the focus not only on the economy and trade, but also on the monetary and financial aspects of the Belt and Road, including discussion of the political and security implications of Beijing’s inroads into Europe and its neighbourhood.     

European national news

This article tracks developments at the national level in key European countries in the area of IT and communications and provides a concise alerting service of important national developments in key European countries. It is co-ordinated by Herbert Smith Freehills LLP and contributed to by firms across Europe. Part of its purpose is to complement the Journal's feature articles and briefing notes by keeping readers abreast of what is currently happening “on the ground” at a national level in implementing EU level legislation and international conventions and treaties. Where an item of European National News is of particular significance, CLSR may also cover it in more detail in the current or a subsequent edition.     

European national news

This article tracks developments at the national level in key European countries in the area of IT and communications and provides a concise alerting service of important national developments. It is co-ordinated by Herbert Smith Freehills LLP and contributed to by firms across Europe. This column provides a concise alerting service of important national developments in key European countries. Part of its purpose is to complement the Journal's feature articles and briefing notes by keeping readers abreast of what is currently happening ``on the ground'' at a national level in implementing EU level legislation and international conventions and treaties. Where an item of European National News is of particular significance, CLSR may also cover it in more detail in the current or a subsequent edition.     

‘Two children to make ends meet’: the ideal family size,parental responsibilities and costs of children on two sides of the Iron Curtain during the post-war fertility decline

One of the major corollaries of the post-war fertility boom and decline is that two-child families became common across Europe after the 1970s. Despite the general agreement on the convergence of fertility trends, there is still little understanding of how this change took place in a comparative perspective of Western and Eastern Europe, which at that time were characterised by Cold War tensions of different ideological regimes. This study addresses this aspect by focusing on individual decisions around childbearing, child-rearing and family size. Based on 104 oral histories from Switzerland and Ukraine, this study illuminates that the urban setting provided parents with a similar set of constraints and opportunities, which eventually resulted in strikingly similar perceptions of the costs of childrearing on two sides of the Iron Curtain. Individuals’ motives to postpone first birth in Switzerland and second birth in Ukraine rested on a similar aspiration to invest in the well-being of children by ensuring material security for the family. This aim was increasingly achieved through female labour-force participation and adoption of modern contraception – the pill in Switzerland and abortion in Ukraine. While the timing of returning to the labour market and the share of women working after entering parenthood might have varied across the two contexts, a good mother became increasingly defined in both contexts in terms of providing emotionally and financially for her children. Although the introduction of modern birth control methods allowed couples to plan family size more carefully, it also made Swiss and Ukrainian women increasingly carry the major costs and actual burden of birth control. Altogether, this study challenges the common assumption around the persistence of strikingly different demographic realities in post-war Western and Eastern Europe by uncovering the mechanisms behind the stabilisation of family size around the two-child family ideal.     

European national news

The regular article tracking developments at the national level in key European countries in the area of IT and communications – co-ordinated by Herbert Smith LLP and contributed to by firms across Europe. This column provides a concise alerting service of important national developments in key European countries. Part of its purpose is to compliment the Journal's feature articles and Briefing Notes by keeping readers abreast of what is currently happening “on the ground” at a national level in implementing EU level legislation and international conventions and treaties. Where an item of European National News is of particular significance, CLSR may also cover it in more detail in the current or a subsequent edition.     

Location choices within global innovation networks: the case of Europe

Rapid growth in internationalization of corporate R&D has spurred considerable interest since the 1990s. Foreign R&D is still mainly driven by the expansion of international production, but technology sourcing has become an increasingly important driver of dispersion. Actually, differences across sectors and companies tend to obscure the mix of motivations behind the development of global innovation networks. This paper distinguishes the various drivers of the international dispersion of corporate R&D in order to elaborate a typology of foreign R&D units, including in emerging countries. This typology is used to discuss the emergence of differentiated global innovation networks and the location choices by type of R&D unit. It is applied to foreign R&D projects in Europe in high and low cost countries between 2002 and 2005. It is then used to discuss the weakening attractiveness of the European Union for R&D activities and the relevant policies that countries can design to attract different types of units.

欧洲主权债务危机及其对中国—东盟金融合作的启示

欧洲主权债务危机的爆发给本来就复苏缓慢的欧盟经济蒙上了一层阴影,并对全球经济复苏造成严重影响。本文对此次债务危机的原因及其影响进行了深入分析,在此基础上,结合中国—东盟金融合作的具体情况,提出中国—东盟金融合作要认真吸取欧洲主权债务危机的教训,在中国—东盟金融合作过程中,各国政府之间要建立良好的政策协调机制、危机应对机制和监管机制,以防范区域性危机的发生。