The next step after Japan? (Virtual reality, training and crisis management). Transatlantic Security Paper No. 2, June 2012

The recent crisis in Japan, which combined tsunami and technological events, shows that any crisis, especially those in developed and developing countries, is from here out a hybrid crisis, mixing natural factors and human/technological (NATECH). Faced with such dramatic events, which exceed any means available for emergency rescue service, it is necessary a) to remain prudent and b) to prepare. One of the means for preparing is unquestionably training. However, here, undoubtedly there are important constraints: How to train, for example, while reproducing vividly and realistically, an event? How to exceed the admittedly useful, although very limited, level of the table-top exercise? How also to avoid the unnecessary mobilization of dozens, even hundreds, of field and operation staffers to take part in an exercise which could lead to a disappointing outcome? A major crisis, a major exercise, in effect. The solution of virtual reality has emerged, in Europe and in the United States. It is also sometimes called “serious game”.

Global Solutions, Local Damages: A Critical Study in Judicial Councils in Central and Eastern Europe. Research Paper in Law 07/2013

This article examines why, how, and with what results have judicial councils spread under the influence of European institutions throughout Central and Eastern Europe in the course of the last twenty years. It first traces back how the judicial councils, themselves just one possible form of administration of courts, have emerged as the recommended universal solution Europe-wide and internationally. Second, it discusses how has this model been exported under the patronage of European and international institutions to transition countries in Central and Eastern Europe. Assessing, thirdly, the reality of the functioning of such new judicial councils in these countries, in particular in Slovakia and Hungary, with the Czech Republic without a judicial council providing a counter-example, it is suggested that their impact on further judicial and legal transition has been either questionable or outright disastrous. This brings, eventually, into question the legitimacy as well as the bare reasonableness of the entire process of European/international standards setting and their later marketing or in reality rather imposition onto the countries in transition.

Family Types and the Persistence of Regional Disparities in Europe. Bruges European Economic Research (BEER) Papers 10/March 2007

This paper examines the association between one of the most basic institutional forms, the family, and a series of demographic, educational, social, and economic indicators across regions in Europe. Using Emmanuel Todd’s classification of medieval European family systems, we identify potential links between family types and regional disparities in household size, educational attainment, social capital, labour participation, sectoral structure, wealth, and inequality. The results indicate that medieval family structures seem to have influenced European regional disparities in virtually every indicator considered. That these links remain, despite the influence of the modern state and population migration, suggests that either such structures are extremely resilient or else they have in the past been internalised within other social and economic institutions as they developed.