According to the essential-facilities doctrine, competition law requires an infrastructural monopoly to provide access. Under the "Bronner criterion", proposed by the EC Court, the doctrine is only applicable when a symmetric infrastructural duopoly is non-viable. This paper uses a simple model to illustrate that, from a welfare point-of-view, the Bronner criterion may provide too little monopoly protection for the incumbent in high-risk new markets, while requiring too much investments from the entrant in low-risk mature markets.

This article concerns Latvian school policy during the 1990s. It is argued that Latvian post-communist school policy bears great similarity with political practice during the time of Soviet rule. The defining feature of present-day Latvian school policy is the privileged status granted the Latvian language and the separation of Latvian children from Russian-speaking children. It is emphasized that the separate school system is a legacy of the Soviet era except that nowadays, official measures favor Latvian rather than Russian-speaking children. Current ethnic politics can thus be seen to exert a strong influence on Latvian society just as it did during the Soviet era and earlier.

How have people in the three Baltic states changed after the fall of the Soviet Union? Do they trust the new political institutions? How do they look upon gender equality, homosexuality or abortion? What differences are there between the three countries, and how can they be explained? These are some of the questions addressed in this report. The analyses are based on data from a series of surveys carried out as part of the research project "Democracy and Social Transition in the Baltic Sea Region" at Södertörns högskola (University College)

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union the Baltic Sea Region and Eastern Europe have attracted increasing interest from researchers from various disciplines. This book gathers researchers from the humanities, the social and natural sciences, who in their respective ways, and from a wide range of perspectives, attempt to come to grips with the challenges that the region poses for research.

How can policy-relevant ideas be effectively communicated to practitioners? While the existing literature has focused on what kind of theory and research are policy relevant, it does not say much about how this knowledge can be communicated. If you want to make a difference, you must know how to reach your target. We take note of the important, but in this context often overlooked opportunities for knowledge diffusion that are provided by the education of young minds and the training of mid-career officials and officers. This article first discusses three contending perspectives on the relationship between scholars and practitioners. It then makes a conceptual elaboration of conditions for communicating research to practitioners, drawing on a wide body of literature on the power of ideas. We conclude by summarizing pointers for how scholars may reflect and how we can act, if we wish to enrich foreign policy practice with research-based ideas.

This article breaks new ground in our understanding of the Maastricht outcome by examining the role of the European People’s Party (EPP) and its member parties. Special emphasis is placed on the meetings of Christian Democrat leaders. At the time of the 1991 parallel Intergovernmental Conferences, six out of 12 heads of government met in the EPP. The article argues that the Treaty on European Union was facilitated by the transnational coalition of the Christian Democrats and by the shared ideological identity of this federalist movement. This weakens the intergovernmental approach to European integration

This article addresses the role of party elites in the setting of European multilevel governance and transnationalization. Emphasis is placed on informal networks, elite socialization and policy coordination. The analysis focuses on the 1985 Intergovernmental Conference, which led to the Single European Act (SEA), and the political family of Christian Democrats, most notably party leaders' meetings. The research material consists of interviews and archival sources. It can be shown that the SEA was to a large extent shaped through transnational party elite socialization. Challenging previous analyses, there is sufficient documentary evidence to claim that political parties, or rather party elites, were centrally involved in the making of this historic treaty. Such involvement of elected political representatives could further the democratic legitimacy of the European Union, but reinforces problems of intra-party democracy

Political parties organized at the European level, Europarties, have become more relevant actors in the European Union. Constitutional and legal rules have recognized their role in the EU political system, they now receive funding from the Union’s budget and the strengthening of the European Parliament offers them more opportunities for influencing the EU policy process. Drawing on extensive interview material, we explain why and how Europarties have strengthened their position and show the crucial part played by coalitions of leading personalities of the Europarties. In piecemeal fashion, these coalitions have capitalized on ‘incomplete contracts’ ever since the opening created by the Party Article in the Maastricht Treaty and have successfully argued for a stronger position for the Europarties. Analysing the regulation, we combine rational choice and historical institutionalism and in the concluding discussion look ahead at the future of Europarties