Clinching the ‘Return to Europe’: The Referendums on EU Accession in Estonia and Latvia

There are two salient features of the referendums on EU membership in Estonia and Latvia. Firstly, the results with decisive pro-EU majorities went easily beyond expectations based on previous opinion poll trends, where these two Baltic states had shown less public enthusiasm for integration than other Central and East European countries. This fact owed much to convincing arguments about abandoning international isolation and about geopolitical choice, with strong historical overtones. The anti-accession cause in both countries suffered from various weaknesses even though, in Estonia though not in Latvia, Eurosceptical attitudes were in evidence. Secondly, there was much less support for EU entry among the strong Russian minorities in both countries. This difference was partly due to the higher incidence of economic circumstances in determining voting behaviour but also to the fact that pro-EU (hence, pro-West) arguments were implicitly and sometimes explicitly unfriendly to Russia. In turn, this also showed that the Soviet legacy was particular to these Baltic countries compared with other accession states from CEE.     

全球视角下的印中关系

平稳发展的印中关系 近几年来,印度与中国的关系一直平稳地向前发展,并且日益多元化.期间,双方的高层互访不断,进一步增进了相互了解,并为诸多领域的合作奠定了基础.这些高层往来包括朱镕基总理2002年1月访问印度,瓦杰帕伊总理2003年6月访问中国,温家宝总理2005年4月访问印度.每次访问都将两国关系提升到一个新的阶段.     

Political systems and distortions: An empirical study

This paper studies empirically why price distortions are more prevalent in some countries than in others. We find no significant difference between democracies and dictatorships, but frequent regime changes reduce distortions. Political systems (factional-subordinate) that encourage redistributive activities (RDA) tend to have more distortions. Allowing for different effects of RDA in democracies and dictatorships, there is a positive and significant effect of RDA on distortions in dictatorships. In democracies, “distortions-destroying” lobbying seems more important since no significant relation between RDA and distortions can be found.