Marginal Player Research Articles

The Public Investment Fund and Salman’s state: the political drivers of sovereign wealth management in Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund (PIF) has grown from marginal player to the most important economic actor in the Kingdom since 2015. Nevertheless, we know surprisingly little about the political economy of the PIF revamp. Against an unfavorable macroeconomic backdrop, I argue that shifts in PIF organization and orientation are fundamentally driven by the centralization of power within the circles of the Saudi ruling family since the rise of Mohammed bin Salman (MBS). The fund's governance framework and network of insiders forming the board of directors mirror the concentration of authority around MBS. In turn, PIF domestic activities shifted from scattered investment patterns associated with the competing influence of senior decision-makers to a highly authoritative and personalized strategy. Moreover, the PIF's response to COVID-19 further exemplifies the turn from a conservative strategy toward a short-term oriented approach to sovereign wealth management. Going beyond macro-level economic and institutional dynamics, the article introduces the role of political agency in SWF choices by stressing how political actors and the distribution of power within ruling elites shape SWFs. The article thus adds to the scholarship on domestic drivers of SWFs and contributes to debates surrounding the interplay between states and markets under processes of financialization.

Citizen Participation in Public Service Media: What It Really Means

In a converged media system where the public is more than ever in control of what, when and where to consume content, public service media must put citizen participation at the heart of their strategies. That means giving the audiences more control over funding of public media, increased participation of civil society in the governance of these media outlets and more meaningful involvement of citizens in their content production process. This paper summarizes recent trends in how media companies in general engage with their audiences in the digital economy and explores opportunities and models of citizen participation in the public media of the future. The paper argues that without adjusting to the realities of the digital economy, which would mean first and foremost building audience centric networked platforms of content distribution, public service media will have a hard time to attract new followers, especially among younger audiences, and risk alienating their already declining audiences. In a media ecosystem populated by a growing number of content producers that are all fiercely competing to capture people’s attention, public service media can gain a competitive edge only if they engage citizens in innovative, meaningful ways. Without the citizen participation element, they risk becoming a marginal player or, worse, a thing of the past.

State and prospects of competition, communications and logistics of agro-food products

Communication and logistics are one of the most important features of the markets; they permeate and constitute its content. Communication and logistics for commodity producers are also as important attribute as production itself, and sometimes even more. For this reason, commodity producers themselves directly and explicitly, but more often through other institutions (including the government), tend to set up stable exclusive communication systems and logistics. This article analyzes the state of the prospects for the formation of communications and logistics networks for agricultural products. The correlation of existing communications and logistics of agricultural products and other types of products (including finished industrial products of various purposes: from machinery, equipment, chemical products to defense, hydrocarbon, carbon and other raw materials, timber and other goods) is analyzed. The established linkages are revealed. They were quantified, calibrated and classified. The existing principles (comparative and absolute advantages) are reviewed and new principles are formulated (marginal player, marginal linkages), which describe the real situation in the markets of agricultural products more correctly. New criteria for grouping and reformatting existing communication and logistics networks, which make it possible to increase the competitiveness of domestic agricultural products are proposed.

Russia and the Search for a Negotiated Solution in Afghanistan

In early 2019, former Afghan mujahedeen leaders and key strongmen of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance met in Moscow to discuss matters of war and peace with their sworn enemy, the Taliban. For Russia, this was the culmination of a long evolution from being a marginal post-Soviet player into a major diplomatic actor on Afghanistan and a supporter of a negotiated settlement involving the Taliban. While secondary to the US–Taliban talks held since 2018 and to the official inter-Afghan talks that started in September 2020, Moscow-sponsored regional peace consultations and informal inter-Afghan dialogue merit attention in terms of how they contributed to the search for peace in Afghanistan and fit into Russia's broader foreign policy patterns.

The rise of complement in ANCA-associated vasculitis: from marginal player to target of modern therapy.

The complement system plays a central role in autoimmune diseases, including anti-neutrophil cytoplasmic antibody (ANCA)-associated vasculitis (AAV). Although complement deposition is scarce in AAV pathological samples, complement activation is required for the development of necrotizing crescentic glomerulonephritis (NCGN) in mouse models of AAV and occurs via the alternative pathway. The anaphylatoxin C5a, produced by the final complement pathway, is determinant to drive the disease in animal models. C5a primes human neutrophils and enhances their activation induced by ANCA; activated neutrophils, in turn, release factors that lead to C5a generation, establishing a self-amplifying loop. C5a is also significantly increased in the serum of AAV patients with active disease compared to those in remission or healthy controls. Inhibition of the C5a receptor with avacopan is an emerging therapy that will probably allow AAV treatment with glucocorticoid-free regimens.

The dangerous role of politics in modern millennial movements

This article investigates the political nature and involvement of millennialism as a religious phenomenon. It, firstly, offers a brief analysis of how millennialism shifted from a significant, but marginal role player in the history of Christianity to become part of the mainstream religious discourse in recent times. It then seeks to explain how this came about by analysing the way this development continues and resonates with the political language and thought of the 19th-century religious discourse in the United States and in early modern England since the 16th century. It finally investigates the dangerous consequences of politicising eschatology by specifically analysing the role of Israel in millennial expectations.

Making a Difference: Fifty Years of Indigenous Programs at Monash University, 1964–2014

Making a Difference: Fifty Years of Indigenous Programs at Monash University, 1964–2014

The United Kingdom and International Peacekeeping: 1960–2014

The UK has continued to regard itself as a world power despite the reduction in its capability for intervention overseas. Its armed forces pride themselves on professionalism, competence and adaptability. In practice their involvement in peacekeeping operation has been sporadic given different priorities, defence cuts and public unease about military intervention overseas. The UK’s current involvement is minimal and the UK is likely to remain a marginal player for the foreseeable future.

John Bull’s Other Vineyard: Selling Australian Wine in Nineteenth-Century Britain

ABSTRACTNineteenth-century Australian wine makers saw Britain as the natural market for their wines and envisioned themselves as participants in a greater imperial economy, so Australian wine should be considered in discussions of imperial commodities and the reception of popular imperialism in advertising. The Australians’ concentrated efforts to sell their wines to British consumers were stymied, though, by high tariffs and negative impressions of the quality of Australian wines, and Australia would remain a marginal player in the British wine market until the second half of the twentieth century. This article uses four case studies to argue that Australian wines were promoted in Britain in the nineteenth century and that the marketing strategies hinged on associating Australian wines with imperial unity and the civilisation of Australian settler society.

Update on "What" and "Where" in Spatial Language: A New Division of Labor for Spatial Terms.

In this article, I revisit Landau and Jackendoff's () paper, "What and where in spatial language and spatial cognition," proposing a friendly amendment and reformulation. The original paper emphasized the distinct geometries that are engaged when objects are represented as members of object kinds (named by count nouns), versus when they are represented as figure and ground in spatial expressions (i.e., play the role of arguments of spatial prepositions). We provided empirical and theoretical arguments for the link between these distinct representations in spatial language and their accompanying nonlinguistic neural representations, emphasizing the "what" and "where" systems of the visual system. In the present paper, I propose a second division of labor between two classes of spatial prepositions in English that appear to be quite distinct. One class includes prepositions such as in and on, whose core meanings engage force-dynamic, functional relationships between objects, with geometry only a marginal player. The second class includes prepositions such as above/below and right/left, whose core meanings engage geometry, with force-dynamic relationships a passing or irrelevant variable. The insight that objects' force-dynamic relationships matter to spatial terms' uses is not new; but thinking of these terms as a distinct set within spatial language has theoretical and empirical consequences that are new. I propose three such consequences, rooted in the fact that geometric knowledge is highly constrained and early-emerging in life, while force-dynamic knowledge of objects and their interactions is relatively unconstrained and needs to be learned piecemeal over a lengthy timeline. First, the two classes will engage different learning problems, with different developmental trajectories for both first and second language learners; second, the classes will naturally lead to different degrees of cross-linguistic variation; and third, they may be rooted in different neural representations.

The Evolution of Political Violence: The Case of Somalia’s Al-Shabaab

ABSTRACTThis research investigates the development and expansion of the al-Shabaab movement in Somalia from 2000 to 2013. Initially a marginal player in Somalia, by 2013 al-Shabaab had transformed into the most formidable armed opposition to challenge the nascent Somali government and its allies. During this time period they administered territory domestically, while expanding their tactical repertoire and geographic scope of attacks. After analyzing the historical conditions (2000–2006) from which al-Shabaab emerged, I explore the evolution of this organization through the use of historical process tracing. This entails looking for critical junctures on a global, national, and local level that had a dramatic impact on the future trajectory of the insurgency. The results show that harsh foreign interventions had many deleterious consequences, acting as an initial impetus for armed resistance, while also acting as a continuous source of controversy which al-Shabaab exploited to gain new recruits. Moreover, irreconcilable intra-organizational schisms also contributed to altering the future organizational decisions made by al-Shabaab. The culmination of these results engage and expand the theory of categorical terrorism, offering observations to help scholars and policy makers alike begin to re-conceptualize ways to study terrorism and political violence.

Europe and Maritime Security in the South China Sea: Beyond Principled Statements?

Europe and Maritime Security in the South China Sea:Beyond Principled Statements? Mathieu Duchâtel (bio) The European Union, France, Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom all signed the G-7 Foreign Ministers’ Declaration on Maritime Security in Lübeck in April 2015. The declaration reiterates their commitment to “freedoms of navigation and overfight” and to an “international maritime order based upon the principles of international law, in particular as reflected in UNCLOS [the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea].” The declaration also makes clear that Europe shares the concerns of the United States and Japan regarding “unilateral actions” in the East and South China Seas.1 However, despite this diplomatic support, Europe has been by far a marginal player in the South China Sea and appears disconnected from the Asian security debate that takes place in Washington—for example, only a very tiny minority of individuals in European capitals has discussed the possibility of freedom of navigation operations in the South China Sea. This essay examines European interests in the South China Sea and argues that Europe faces a gap between intentions and capabilities regarding Asian security. This gap is widening as a result of the deteriorating security environment in Europe’s immediate neighborhood—the wars in eastern Ukraine and Syria, the refugee crisis, and the necessity of protecting European populations from terrorist actions. For the United States, Europe should be taken for what it is—a partner in values that can only make limited contributions to improving the security environment in the South China Sea. As long as tensions in the South China Sea remain below the threshold of armed confrontation, the policy debate in Europe will remain focused on how to best formulate statements. [End Page 54] Europe’s Declaratory Diplomacy Europe has been generally restrained in commenting on recent developments in the South China Sea. At the EU level, the response to deteriorating security trends has come in the form of reactive statements reaffirming the principles of peaceful settlement, international law, and the importance of confidence building. This approach is summarized in the 2012 “Guidelines on the EU’s Foreign and Security Policy in East Asia.” The document defines the European interests in the South China Sea in terms of the promotion of a “rules-based international system [and] the principle of freedom of navigation” and mentions “the risk of tensions impacting on the consistent increase in trade and investment, with negative consequences for a ll.” 2 The document also encourages the claimants to resolve their “disputes through peaceful and cooperative solutions and in accordance with international law (in particular UNCLOS), while encouraging all parties to clarify the basis for their claims.”3 The EU reiterates these general principles whenever a major development occurs in the South China Sea. In May 2014, it issued a statement when China deployed an oil rig in waters disputed with Vietnam, leading to a tense standoff that lasted two months. The statement mentions the international law of the sea and the importance of a “peaceful and cooperative solution.” The main adjustment in the May 2014 statement concerns the greater insistence on freedom of navigation and the need to refrain from unilateral actions. Further statements became slightly more specific, including one released on the occasion of Vietnamese prime minister Nguyen Tan Dung’s visit to Brussels in December 2015 that emphasized Europe’s “serious concerns” regarding “massive land reclamation.” 4 A final notable feature of the European approach is the constant reaffirmation of the importance of all processes led by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to guarantee peace and stability in the South China Sea. Repeated in all meetings where the EU has a voice—such as the ASEAN Regional Forum and the Asia-Europe Meeting—this diplomatic language suggests that the essence of the European approach is to remain [End Page 55] at the general level of principles and avoid taking clear sides.5 Similar to other external stakeholders, the EU does not have a stance on territorial sovereignty in the South China Sea. At the same time, the European choice has been to emphasize international law without stating clearly which elements of UNCLOS or...

"Beyond religions and even beyond mankind": Karl Shapiro's Jewish Walt Whitman

The Jewish-American poet most widely associated with Whit- man is Allen Ginsberg. Ginsberg famously adopted Whitman into his Beat-generation poetry, with its countercultural agenda, flaunting of the body and sexuality, and style replete with long, enumerative lines.1 Yet, extensive critical attention to Ginsberg has fostered the misconception that he is the primary, or sole, Jewish-American poet with a significant relationship to Whitman. In fact, numerous Jewish-American poets have upheld such relationships, although most remain underexamined.2 Fail- ing to interrogate these connections not only limits our understanding of Whitman's role in American literature and culture;it also limits our understanding of a mode by which Jews have shaped and defined their poetry and identity in America.Karl Shapiro, author of the seminal, Jewish-themed collection of poetry, Poems of a Jew (1958), is a poet whose relationship to Whitman has been regrettably dwarfed by Ginsberg's.3 Shapiro, too, was an adamant champion of Whitman; yet, the poetic, political, and social implications of this championing have been thus far overlooked. With the exception of a very few critical investigations, in fact, many aspects of Shapiro's work have suffered neglect in recent decades.4 The decline in Shapiro's career and reputation from its height in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s has been attributed to the vicious public attacks he leveled upon leading Modernist figures of the time, primarily Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot, as well as W. B. Yeats. Crucially, Shapiro's opposition to these figures, whom he perceived to be exclusionary, right wing, and anti-Semitic, was profoundly motivated by his identity as a Jew in gen- eral, and a Jewish poet in particular.Whitman was not merely a marginal player in Shapiro's confronta- tion with these Modernist poets, whose opinions of Whitman were at best ambivalent, at worst hostile. Rather, Whitman was at center stage.5 Never one to modulate his viewpoints, openly lauded Whitman in essays, poetry, and interviews: Walt Whitman has had more influ- ence on my poetic thinking than anybody.6 valued Whitman above other writers he respected, such as William Carlos Williams, Emily Dickinson, W. H. Auden, D. H. Lawrence, Henry Miller, Ran- dall Jarrell, and Hart Crane. 7 This essay will demonstrate how fashioned Whitman into an ally against the more conservative elements of the Modernist poetic milieu.8 Shapiro, experiencing himself mar- ginalized from the mainstream as a Jew and poet, views Whitman in a similarly marginalized position in American society. Indeed, Shapiro's portrayals of Jews and Jewishness in his writing can be seen to parallel his portrayals of Whitman, thus demonstrating how comes to imagine Whitman implicitly as a Jew.This study of and Whitman seeks to provide a more nu- anced understanding of how Whitman features in American literature more broadly, and the Jewish-American poetic tradition more specifi- cally. We will see how, as interprets Whitman, Whitman himself is inevitably transformed, politicized, and ethnicized.Karl Shapiro's Outsider IdentityTo grasp why found such significance in Whitman, it is crucial to pause on Shapiro's sense of identity, which, as an American, a Jew, and a poet, was vexed. Ironically, in terms of national identity, many scholars considered to be quintessentially American, noting his use of idiomatic language and depictions of middle-class life.9 Hayden Carruth stated, Shapiro was derivative but never imitative. He was an American.10 Shapiro's Pulitzer Prize-winning collection V-Letter and Other Poems (1945), written during his World War II military service, further solidified his reputation as an American poet. Hilene Flanz- baum writes that the various personas assumed by in his war poetry made him broadly appealing: Shapiro has written poems about being Jewish and Christian, Native-American and Black, wounded and healthy, and it is indeed part of his point that as the composite American-and most important, as the ideal American soldier-he can be any of these things (263). …

THE VATICAN AND THE RESHAPING OF THE EUROPEAN INTERNATIONAL ORDER AFTER THE FIRST WORLD WAR

ABSTRACTThe Vatican is often cast as a marginal player in the reshaping of the European international order after the First World War. Drawing on new archival material, this article argues for a reassessment of the content and consequences of papal diplomacy. It focuses on the years between 1917 and 1929, during which time the Vatican used the tools of international law and state-to-state diplomacy to expand its power in both eastern and western Europe. The Vatican's interwar activism sought to disseminate a new Catholic vision of international affairs, which militated against the separation of church and state, and in many contexts helped undermine the principles of the League of Nations’ minority rights regime. Thanks in no small part to the assiduity of individual papal diplomats – who disseminated the new Catholic vision of international affairs by supporting anti-communist political factions – the Vatican was able to claim a more prominent role in European political affairs and lay the legal and discursive foundations for an alternate conception of the European international order, conceived in starkly anti-secular terms.

Israel: The Non-Parallel Player

Political tensions and rivalry between Iran and Israel have cast a shadow over India's bilateral relations with both these countries. While one offers energy security, the other provides military–security capability towards ensuring greater Indian influence in the Middle East. Conscious of their relative advantages and challenges, India has managed to maintain a fine balance in its relations with Iran and Israel. Despite the suspected involvement of Iranian citizens in the 13 February 2012 terror attack on the Israeli embassy vehicle in New Delhi, Israel could continue to be a marginal player in Indo-Iranian relations. The same, however, will not be true for the US, which seeks to limit and if possible change the substance and direction of Indo-Iranian relations.

African health innovation systems: preface

Preface Concern over access to essential medicines has dominated international health policy debates over the last two decades. Much of this debate has focused on the role of intellectual property rights in either restricting or enabling developing countries to address persistent and emerging medical challenges. Much of this debate has focused on African countries which have borne higher disease burdens due in part to their low income levels. These arguments and the associated policy prescriptions are guided by the view that Africa will remain a marginal player in the world of health innovation and will continue to rely on imported solutions. This collection of original papers provides a different prognosis. They reveal an emergent “health innovation system” in Africa that is driven by a combination of local research, entrepreneurship and institutional adaptations. The papers draw from experiences in Ghana, Kenya, Madagascar, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa, Tanzania, and Uganda to provide a clear view of the elements of the emerging African health innovation system. First, they demonstrate that the emerging innovation systems are driven by local health concerns and not by external interests. Second, the case studies underscore the importance of investment in research and development (R&D) and the generation of solution-oriented knowledge. Third, the essays demonstrate the importance of creating incentives and building institutions that can help to facilitate the commercialization of research results. Finally, the case studies show that Africa’s health innovation systems are integrated into the global knowledge ecology and benefit from extensive international partnerships. These essays have far-reaching implications for national and international health innovation policy. In addition to presenting research findings, the papers provide clear policy prescriptions on how African countries can help to strengthen their emerging innovation systems so that they can improve health outcomes while contributing to overall economic diversification. This volume is relevant to the health profession as well to those responsible for economic transformation. It challenges African countries to come up with policies and institutions that facilitate medical innovation. If they do this for health innovation, they will learn critical policy lessons which they can apply in other sectors. These essays will change the way international health cooperation is conducted. The traditional belief that it is not cost-effective or feasible to undertake basic health research in Africa will need to reconsidered. In fact, the case for R&D partnerships with African institutions will become a critical element in the successful commercialization of drugs of relevance to Africa. More specifically, the papers show the significant role that African universities and research institutes are playing as centers of discovery and policy champions. Excluding them from R&D can only delay the deployment of critical technologies. The timing of the publication of these papers is particularly critical. First, they have come at a time when firms in industrialized countries are rethinking their global strategies, especially in relation to the location of new research and production facilities. These papers show that some African countries could be viable partners as they seek to become part of the global knowledge ecology. Second, African economies are expanding, and more attention is shifting to knowledge-based industries. Health-related technologies are clear candidates for international partnerships. Third, African countries are integrating their economies to create large regional markets that can better foster innovation and foreign direct investment. All African regional economic integration organizations have identified medical research as one of their priorities. Finally, these regional organizations consider business incubation through facilities such as science parks as important mechanisms for fostering industrial clustering and raising economic productivity. Correspondence: calestous_juma@harvard.edu Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, 79 John F. Kennedy Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA Juma BMC International Health and Human Rights 2010, 10(Suppl 1):I1 http://www.biomedcentral.com/1472-698X/10/S1/I1

Supreme Court Activism in Economic Policy in the Waning Days of the New Deal: Interpreting the Fair Labor Standards Act, 1941–1946

Supreme Court Activism in Economic Policy in the Waning Days of the New Deal: Interpreting the Fair Labor Standards Act, 1941-1946 JEROLD WALTMAN* Students ofthe Supreme Court universally agree that it made a dramatic shift in 1937. First, in West Coast Hotel Company v. Parrish,1 it retreated from the unbridled use of the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause to invalidate state economic regulatory legislation. Then, in National Labor Relations Board v. Jones and Laughlin Steel Corporation? the Justices widened the reach of congressional power under the Commerce Clause. This looser reading of the Commerce Clause was solidified in 1941 with UnitedStates v. Darby Lumber Company* and Wickard v. Filburn.4 So decisive were these cases in dividing what went before from what came afterward that Bernard Schwartz has said, “The 1937 reversal marked the accession of what may be considered the second Hughes Court—so different was itsjurisprudence from that ofthe Hughes Court that had preceded it.”5 Whereas the definingjurisprudence ofthe former had been close supervision ofeconomic policy, the latter refused to second guess the economic wisdom ofcongressional (and state) regulatory initiatives. Alpheus T. Mason summarized Justice Harlan Fisk Stone’s approach, which was indicative ofthe entire Court ofthis era, as one that would not say that “no economic legislation would ever violate constitutional restraints, [but that]... in this area the court’s role would be strictly confined.”6 Confirming this approach, between 1937 and 1957 the Supreme Court struck down only four federal statutes as unconstitutional, none of which were economic in nature.7 INTERPRETING THE FAIR LABOR STANDARDS ACT 59 However, we must not take this retreat on the constitutional front as signaling a com­ plete judicial abdication from involvement in economic policy. For in upholding the New Deal statutes, the Justices necessarily created a role for themselves in interpreting them. Given the numerous compromises President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s congressional leaders had to make in order to secure these mea­ sures’ passage, to say nothing of the inher­ ent complexity and ambiguity of the statutes, giving life to these enactments necessarily involved the Court in policymaking. Under­ standing how active the Court really was in the realm of economic policy in the years fol­ lowing 1937, therefore, requires an examina­ tion ofthe path it followed in interpreting these statutes. The purpose ofthis article is to scrutinize the Supreme Court’s decisions regarding the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938s (FLSA) be­ tween 1941 and 1946, the five years after it was upheld.9 Such an exercise provides an impor­ tant window onto the Court’s role in economic policy, inasmuch as the FLSA was one of the most far-reaching of the New Deal reforms.10 The first section is devoted to a brief discus­ sion ofhow one determinesjudicial activism in statutory interpretation. The second part lays out the critical statutory provisions as they were written in 1938. In the third through sev­ enth sections, the article takes a detailed look at the cases that came to the Court during this five- year period, searching for clues ofheight­ ened policy choice. There was a good bit of activism in these cases, and it had a detectable political slant. The Supreme Court, it turns out, was considerably more than a marginal player in economic policy. Judicial Activism and Statutory Interpretation Ernest Young has offered a six-fold classifica­ tion ofthe various types ofjudicial activism in constitutional jurisprudence: In United States v. Darby Lumber Co., a 1941 decision involving the rights of lumber industry workers, the Justices widened the reach of congressional power under the Commerce Clause to a considerable degree. Pictured, cross ties are loaded at a lumber yard in Mississippi. 60 JOURNAL OF SUPREME COURT HISTORY Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Social Security bill in 1935, one of his many New Deal initiatives de­ signed to protect workers. Three years later, he would sign the Fair Labor Standards Act into law at the urg­ ing of Frances Perkins (above, third from right, and right), his Secretary of Labor. (1) second-guessing the federal political branches or state governments; (2) departing from text and/or history; (3) departing from judicial precedents; (4) issuing broad...

Dynamic Pricing and Learning in Electricity Markets

We analyze the price-formation process in an infinite-horizon oligopoly model where hydroelectric generators engage in dynamic price-based competition. The analysis focuses on the role of “indifference” prices, i.e., prices that equate the gains from releasing or storing water. Strategies where players bid their indifference prices and the marginal player undercuts the lowest-cost unsuccessful bidder constitute a Markov Perfect Equilibrium (MPE) under appropriate conditions. These conditions involve symmetric production capacity and nonfractional (i.e., “all or nothing”) output by successful bidders. Although the MPE solution represents an equilibrium consistent with dynamic strategic behavior, it requires computational sophistication by market participants. However, a basic “learning” procedure involving indifference prices converges to an MPE.

The Wild, Wild East: Why the DVU Doesn't Matter and Why the NPD Does

German politicians, journalists, and analysts are predicting that the DVU's and the NPD's tenure in state parliaments will be brief. Referring to the NPD, Wolfgang Bosbach of the CDU claimed that the party would quickly lose its appeal because its politicians were "generally lazy, not very intelligent and therefore ineffective in parliament." Similar opinions have been voiced about the DVU. In this article, I argue that, while the DVU is likely to remain a marginal player in German politics, the NPD's electoral breakthrough represents a major new development. Over the last decade, the NPD has evolved into a highly organized social movement in eastern Germany. The fact that it can now mobilize portions of the eastern electorate strongly suggests that it has become a political force as well.

The European parliament in CFSP: More than a marginal player?

(2004). The European parliament in CFSP: More than a marginal player? The International Spectator: Vol. 39, No. 2, pp. 31-46.