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Public diplomacy has gained worldwide acceptance due to its role in engaging foreign publics and fostering mutual understanding. However, as an integral part of public diplomacy, a message on its own cannot necessarily generate the expected effect among target groups. By drawing upon the two-step flow of communication theory, this article discusses the credibility of messengers in public diplomacy and the practical necessity of public diplomacy by proxy. Through looking at the Jean Monnet Programme, one of the European Union (EU) studies programmes launched by the EU, and its implementation in China, the article aims to develop an understanding of how EU public diplomacy by proxy is implemented towards target countries.

International audience ; The development of rail freight is central to the European Union's transportation policy. As it has been the case for road and air transport and for other network industries (e.g. energy and telecommunications), deregulation and market opening have been the main policy options chosen by EU to promote rail freight. But rail freight is still facing a doubly-imperfect competition. On one hand, the intermodal competition is off balance between road and rail. On the other hand, intra-modal competition between railway operators is imperfect. Railway operators are not all alike, major companies exist and they play a structuring role that regulation must take into account. According to the HHI (Hirschman Herfindahl Index) the market structure is still characterised by a strong concentration. Therefore, the key roles played by the major companies as well as, in some countries, the remaining action of the state, have to be addressed, since both of them represent some of the key features of imperfect competition in the rail sector. Numerous entry barriers remain and market power manifest itself in many areas of rail freight. This should be given special attention by regulators or competition authorities. National regulators should also communicate with one another, as they will be confronted with major companies' market power.

International audience ; The development of rail freight is central to the European Union's transportation policy. As it has been the case for road and air transport and for other network industries (e.g. energy and telecommunications), deregulation and market opening have been the main policy options chosen by EU to promote rail freight. But rail freight is still facing a doubly-imperfect competition. On one hand, the intermodal competition is off balance between road and rail. On the other hand, intra-modal competition between railway operators is imperfect. Railway operators are not all alike, major companies exist and they play a structuring role that regulation must take into account. According to the HHI (Hirschman Herfindahl Index) the market structure is still characterised by a strong concentration. Therefore, the key roles played by the major companies as well as, in some countries, the remaining action of the state, have to be addressed, since both of them represent some of the key features of imperfect competition in the rail sector. Numerous entry barriers remain and market power manifest itself in many areas of rail freight. This should be given special attention by regulators or competition authorities. National regulators should also communicate with one another, as they will be confronted with major companies' market power.

This paper introduces a new composite index - the financial supply index (FSI), which measures the level of supply of foreign capital to 11 EU new member states (NMS). We aim to fill the gap in the literature, which has so far focused on creating indices that measure the financial conditions only, while the economic factors, also important determinants of capital flows, have been overlooked. FSI includes both the financial and economic determinants of capital flows and is estimated using Kalman filtering, principal components and variance-equal weights approach. Three financial supply cycles in NMS could be extracted based on the analysis of FSI dynamics. The results indicated that the main drivers of financial supply to NMS are externally determined, with economic sentiment and business climate in the Eurozone carrying the highest weight. In addition, we create a new indicator - the Refinancing Risk Ratio (RRR), which relates the supply and demand for foreign capital, to quantify the external refinancing conditions and risk faced by the government. We are able to distinguish between two main episodes of high refinancing risk faced recently by the EU NMS - one during the global financial crisis, and the other during the European sovereign debt crisis, but the episodes significantly differ in nature.

This article considers the resurgence of British interest in their former foe, Napoleon Bonaparte, apparent in literature of the 1840s. The circumstances surrounding his death and interment on St Helena had already given him mythical status. The British government's formal approval in May 1840 for the repatriation of his mortal remains to Paris prompted a renewed interest in this heroic figure on British shores. Thackeray, who had attended the Parisian ceremony and familiarized himself with ensuing fictional and historical re-appraisals of the Napoleonic wars, had recognized the potential of this material for anti-heroic treatment by the time he began Vanity Fair. However, by the April 1848 serial episode, in which the novel's narrative chronology closes down for a ten-year break, the contemporary political framework in which the novel was being written had changed. That March Thackeray had dined at the same table as Louis-Napoleon, the Emperor's heir, who had just returned from a premature attempt to claim his political inheritance. When Becky dons the exiled Emperor's mantle at the start of chapter LXIV, she serves as a reminder to Thackeray's initial readers that the Napoleonic legacy was still very much alive as a spectre haunting European politics.