The 'Yukos affair', its motives and implications. OSW Study 25/2006

When interpreting the "Yukos affair", it is hard to focus on any single particular motive or explanation that would easily rationalise the government's actions against the company. The "Yukos affair" is a multi-layered process with a number of different reasons for its cause. When one scrutinises the events around the company, the impression may be obtained that the Kremlin seemed at first not to have had any ultimate strategy; the authorities' position evolved as time went by. At first, the conflict was mainly of a political nature; economic factors did not arise until later, when the oil sector was undergoing changes in ownership.

An Investigation of Career Tenure in the European Parliament: Electoral, Party and Individual Considerations. ACES Working Papers, 2012

What explains the length of a Member of the European Parliament’s career? Little evidence of careerism has been uncovered in the European Parliament, particularly when compared to studies of legislator tenure in the U.S. Congress. Due to the different historical contexts in which these two legislatures developed, it seems reasonable to rule out many of the explanations used to account for increasing careerism in Congress in searching for the influences on legislator tenure in the European Parliament. This paper therefore proposes three potential models of careerism in the European Parliament: an electoral systems model, a party model, and an individual model. While the data necessary to test these models has not been fully compiled, this paper outlines the major hypotheses of each model and details plans for the operationalization of all independent and control variables. These models are not intended to be mutually exclusive alternatives, but rather each explanation is expected to influence each MEP in varying degrees.