Belarus 2006. OSW Report, January 2007

The presidential election of 19 March 2006, which Alyaksandr Lukashenka won, played an important role in developing the dictatorial political regime in Belarus. In order to ensure Lukashenka's victory, the authorities employed repressive and undemocratic methods, which since then have become permanent elements of the political system in Belarus. They included legal and administrative measures to limit the citizens' freedom, arbitrary ways of applying these measures, actions by the state security institutions intended to intimidate the public, a large-scale state propaganda campaign, and restrictions on civil liberties and freedom of speech. The presidential election strengthened Alyaksandr Lukashenka's political position, as the president extended his rule by another five years to 2011. It also reinforced the repression apparatus, consolidated the ruling group and ensured that the democrats remained marginalised. This has ensured the stability of the Belarusian regime and preserved the country's specific political and economic system.This report aims to present the situation in Belarus since the presidential election in March 2006. Part I, devoted to the internal situation, is a description of the internal political scene, i.e. the ruling camp and the opposition. It also includes a section on the prevailing moods in Belarusian society. Another section presents the economic situation in Belarus and the government's economic policy.Part II examines the foreign relations of Belarus, and consists of two sections: the first describes the Belarusian government's relations with Russia, its single most important foreign partner, and the second its relations with Western countries, i.e. the EU member states and NATO countries. Finally, the last part contains predictions of future developments in Belarus.

Ukraine's cooperation with the IMF - unfulfilled hopes for deeper reforms. OSW Commentary No. 52, 2011-06-15

The Party of Regions took power in early 2010, after Ukraine had been plunged deep in economic crisis. Over the next year, with the external markets recovering, the country’s economic situation started to improve gradually. Ukraine’s economic stabilisation was also strengthened by its resumed cooperation with the International Monetary Fund, which provided for a loan worth $15.1 billion. The issuing of successive tranches of the loan was made dependent on the implementation of a comprehensive reform programme. The cooperation went quite smoothly at first; however, as the economic situation in Ukraine improved, the reformist zeal of the Ukrainian government started to fade, and obstacles began piling up. As a result, Ukraine was refused the third tranche, scheduled for this March, and for the moment the credit line remains frozen. Even though the IMF has numerous reservations about the Ukrainian government’s economic policy, the fundamental condition for resuming cooperation is reform of the pension system, which the parliament should adopt. The difficulties with fulfilling the obligations made to the IMF reflect the wider problem with implementing reforms in Ukraine, as the Party of Regions promised after taking power. Changes which do not affect the interests of influential lobbies are quite easy to carry out. Often, however, these changes are not conducive to the economy’s liberalisation; moreover, the influential lobbies are successful in blocking reforms that could harm their businesses. Another impediment to the changes is that some reforms are likely to bring about painful social consequences, and that can affect public support for the ruling group. Even though theoretically possible, it does not seem likely that Ukraine’s cooperation with the IMF will be terminated. But even if this cooperation is continued, deeper reforms in Ukraine are likely to be postponed until after the parliamentary elections in autumn 2012.

Turbulence ahead: disputes within the Russian ruling elite are gathering force. OSW Commentary No. 91, 2012-09-27

The last month has seen a public confrontation between Igor Sechin, the president of Rosneft, and Arkady Dvorkovich, the deputy prime minister, concerning the consolidation of the energy sector. This is the latest in a series of disputes between the Kremlin & businessmen from Putin’s inner circle on one side, and the government & Prime Minister Medvedev on the other. These disputes have been wide-ranging in nature, concerning economic policy, the scope of competency of individual members of the elite, but also the ‘tough line’ adopted by the Kremlin since Vladimir Putin’s return to the presidency. The Kremlin, which is still the main decision-making centre in Russia, has been effectively forcing its opinions through in its short-term disputes with the government. However, a new element in the ongoing conflicts, which is unfavourable to President Putin, is their exceptional strength, their much more public nature, and their wide range (which has included criticism of the president himself) and ever-changing context, especially the worsening socio-economic situation. These conflicts have been overlapping with signs of dissent among Putin’s business supporters, and their declining political willingness to support the leader unconditionally. The Kremlin’s response to the unrest consists of intensifying efforts to discipline the elite and weakening those groups in which Vladimir Putin has limited confidence. The elite’s support is crucial to the stability of his government; to maintain this support, the Kremlin is ready to introduce restrictive and repressive actions against both parliamentarians and government officials. In the short term, such a policy will force the Kremlin’s supporters back into obedience, but fears of a further increase in repression are also starting to be expressed on the sidelines.

Changes in the political elite, economy and society of Belarus: Appearances and reality. OSW Study 30/2008

In late 2006 and early 2007, relations between Russia and Belarus were hit by the most serious crisis in many years. In a setting of heightened tension, the Belarusian authorities decided to gradually modify their economic policy and thoroughly restructure the ruling class. The new situation created new, much more difficult challenges for the Belarusian opposition. The processes initiated by the authorities were not intended to bring about either the democratisation of public and political life or full economic liberalisation; their only purpose was to enable the regime to tackle new challenges and survive in the changing international context. Nevertheless, modernisation has been initiated in Belarus' authoritarian system of power, which until now was considered to be completely incapable of reform. This puts the country's main political and economic partners, including the European Union, in a new situation.

EU Democratic Legitimacy and National Parliaments. CEPS Essay No. 7, 25 November 2013

The role of national parliaments in the EU has been at the centre of a long debate. Since the Maastricht treaty, new powers to the EU level have been accompanied not only by an increasing role of the European Parliament (EP) in the legislative process, but also by a number of declarations and protocols to ensure that national parliaments received the information and documents required to effectively monitor their governments in EU affairs. The Lisbon Treaty extended the guarantees and also included new modes of direct participation. The proper use of the mechanisms in place, namely, the subsidiarity checks, the political dialogue with the Commission and the inter-parliamentary cooperation with the European Parliament, has become of vital importance in view of recent developments in EU economic policy and beyond. The choice for increasing inter-governmentalism in decision-making and the centralisation of the implementing and supervisory powers in the Commission and the Central Bank have raised questions about political accountability and the appropriate involvement of parliaments. However, the extent to which national parliaments should be more involved is also rather controversial. This essay examines the difficulty of defining and addressing the question of the democratic legitimacy in the EU. It examines the role of the national parliaments in the treaties and explores ways in which they can contribute to improving that legitimacy.

Political economy of the Agenda 2010 reforms: How Gerhard Schröder overcame the "blocked republic". ACES Cases No. 2008.3

This essay will show that the Schröder-led government managed to break the political gridlock and introduce the Agenda 2010 because key institutional structures of Germany‟s political economy had lost their obstructive powers. In other words, the formerly semi-sovereign state had reclaimed its sovereignty. To understand how this happened, Peter Katzenstein's concept of the semi-sovereign state is first explored as a framework through which to analyze economic policy continuity and change. Within this framework, the causes for constant reform inertia between 1982 and 2002, in spite of varying political constellations and changes in the country‟s economic structure, are then discussed. This analysis will demonstrate that the Agenda 2010 reforms are predominantly a result of underlying incremental change in the political economy and its effect on the political decision-making process. Finally, the findings of this analysis are summarized and discussed with the aim of better understanding the economic policies of the current grand coalition government of the CDU/CSU and the SPD government under Chancellor Angela Merkel.

The Relevance of International Spillovers and Asymmetric Effects in the Taylor Rule. CEPS Working Document No. 403, February 2015

Deviations of policy interest rates from the levels implied by the Taylor rule have been persistent before the financial crisis and increased especially after the turn of the century. Compared to the Taylor benchmark, policy rates were often too low. This paper provides evidence that both international spillovers, for instance international dependencies in the interest rate-setting of central banks, and nonlinear reaction patterns can offer a more realistic specification of the Taylor rule in the main industrial countries. The inclusion of international spillovers and, even more, nonlinear dynamics improves the explanatory power of standard Taylor reaction functions. Deviations from Taylor rates tend to be smaller and their negative trend can be eliminated.

Mapping competitiveness with European data. Bruegel Blueprint 23, 6 March 2015

Europe needs improved competitiveness to escape the current economic malaise, so it might seem surprising that there is no common European definition of competitiveness, and no consensus on how to consistently measure it. To help address this situation, this Blueprint provides an inventory and an assessment of the data related to the measurement of competitiveness in Europe. It is intended as a handbook for researchers interested in measuring competiveness, and for policymakers interested in new and better measures of competitiveness. MAPCOMPETE has been designed to provide an assessment of data opportunities and requirements for the comparative analysis of competitiveness in European countries at the macro and the micro level.

Progress on the “Juncker Plan” continues – but are Member States behind it? EPC Commentary, 18 March 2015

Introduction. The draft regulation on the Juncker Investment Plan was presented by the European Commission in January and has been discussed by the Ecofin Council on 10 March. This leaves sufficient time for the European Parliament to express its views and to make the Plan operational by the summer, as aimed for by President Juncker. But while governments agreed swiftly, ministers did not decide on two issues that are of importance: the eligibility of projects that have benefited from the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) and the Horizon 2020 programmes and the contributions of the national promotional banks (NPBs) to the investment plan. This commentary argues that the foreseeable engagement of NPBs remains unsatisfactory.

Transnational Globalization & Regional Governance. CES Germany & Europe Working Papers, No. 06.2, July 1996

Since the end of the 1980s, international relations has experienced a resurgence of regionalism in Europe (Single Market, Maastricht) and the Americas (NAFTA, MERCOSUR). Why did regional economic cooperation gain mo­ mentum? Theoretical approaches have proved the relevance of institutions, intergovernmental bargains, and na­ tional interest formation for the emergence of cooperation, but fall short in explaining why new cooperative moves happened in the late 1980s and early 1990s and not earlier. This paper argues that the simultaneous con­vergence of interests favoring regional organization of states was stimulated by transnational globalization. Since the early 1980s, states had to adapt to the pressures from transnational globalization, from actors and systems which are not shaped by national territories and interests, and which undermined traditional national economic policy and domestic coalitions. Under the new circumstances, joint regional governance on specific policy areas became an attractive option to respond to new constraints. With the conceptualization of transnational globalization as an explanatory factor for regional cooperation this paper does not dismiss other approaches, but rather attempts to complement the research agenda by shedding light on a crucial-but often neglected-aspect of international relations.

What do Eurozone academics think about EMU reform? On broad support and German exceptionalism. Bruges Political Research Papers 41/2015.

This paper is an empirical contribution to the literature on the formation of policy preferences on Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) reform within its Member States. In the aftermath of the euro crisis, many proposals to ‘complete’ EMU have been tabled. However, discord among Member States has led to a piecemeal restructuring of EMU. For this paper, a survey has been conducted among euro area academic experts, gauging preferences on EMU reform. We find that general consensus masks significant discord among academics from different Member States. Our data indicates the existence of conflicting national epistemic communities, bound by shared causal beliefs on macro-economic policy. Academics within the key creditor Member State, Germany, assume an outlier position. Within the sample of German academics, economists are particularly strongly opposed to all moves in the direction of fiscal or social union. As economists are those academic experts most likely to influence the economic policy beliefs dominant among the German policy elite, these results are highly politically salient. We confront these findings with the literature on the exceptionalism of German economics. We contend that our results substantiate the claim that inadequate EMU reform and, more generally, the EU approach to the Eurozone crisis, can be partially explained by the firm grip these economic doctrines hold over the economics profession and policy-making circles in Germany.

The Business Models and Economics of Peer-to-Peer lending. ECRI Research Report No 17, May 2016

This paper reviews peer-to-peer (P2P) lending, its development in the UK and other countries, and assesses the business and economic policy issues surrounding this new form of intermediation. P2P platform technology allows direct matching of borrowers’ and lenders’ diversification over a large number of borrowers without the loans having to be held on an intermediary balance sheet. P2P lending has developed rapidly in both the US and the UK, but it still represents a small fraction, less than 1%, of the stock of bank lending. In the UK – but not elsewhere – it is an important source of loans for smaller companies. We argue that P2P lending is fundamentally complementary to, and not competitive with, conventional banking. We therefore expect banks to adapt to the emergence of P2P lending, either by cooperating closely with third-party P2P lending platforms or offering their own proprietary platforms. We also argue that the full development of the sector requires much further work addressing the risks and business and regulatory issues in P2P lending, including risk communication, orderly resolution of platform failure, control of liquidity risks and minimisation of fraud, security and operational risks. This will depend on developing reliable business processes, the promotion to the full extent possible of transparency and standardisation and appropriate regulation that serves the needs of customers.

How mobile is tech talent? A case study of IT professionals based on data from LinkedIn. CEPS Special Report No. 140, July 2016

This study aims to provide independent and in-depth insights into how IT professionals move from one region to another within Europe and beyond. This study was carried out by Mikkel Barslund, Research Fellow, and Matthias Busse, Researcher in the Economic Policy research unit at CEPS. The work was commissioned by the business networking website LinkedIn, whose data analysts kindly provided the data used in this study, aggregated by region and in relative and anonymised terms. The authors are solely responsible for the findings and opinions expressed in this study. CEPS is an independent policy research institute in Brussels, whose mission is to produce sound policy research leading to constructive solutions to the challenges facing Europe today. The views expressed in this study are solely those of the authors and should not be attributed to CEPS or to any other institution with which they are associated or to the business networking website LinkedIn.

Drivers for and against municipal wastewater recycling: a review

The reclamation, treatment and reuse of municipal wastewater can provide important environmental benefits. In this paper, 25 studies on this topic were reviewed and it was found that there are many (\textgreater150) different drivers acting for and against wastewater recycling. To deal with the challenge of comparing studies which entailed different research designs, a framework was developed which allowed the literature to be organized into comparable study contexts. Studies were categorized according to the level of analysis (wastewater recycling scheme, city, water utility, state, country, global) and outcome investigated (development/investment in new schemes, program implementation, percentage of wastewater recycled, percentage of water demand covered by recycled water, multiple outcomes). Findings across comparable case studies were then grouped according to the type (for or against recycling) and category of driver (social, natural, technical, economic, policy or business). The utility of the framework is demonstrated by summarizing the findings from four Australian studies at the city level. The framework offers a unique approach for disentangling the broad range of potential drivers for and against water recycling and to focus on those that seem relevant in specific study contexts. It may offer a valuable starting point for building hypotheses in future work.

Foreign assistance legislation for fiscal year 1982.

Hearings held March 11-May 13, 1981.