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The authors review the impact of Europeanization on the Cyprus conflict. Since 1974, the United Nations has developed increasingly detailed proposals for a bi-zonal, bi-communal federation. However, throughout the decades of failed negotiations the main parties have essentially stuck to their negotiating positions. In the 1990s, with Cyprus' application for European Union (EU) membership, the EU became a key external determinant of the evolution of the conflict. Indeed, because of Cyprus' accession process and Turkey's own aspirations to join the Union, the parties to the conflict equate Europeanization with EU-ization. EU-ization in Cyprus has two dimensions: the impact of the EU as a framework on conflict resolution efforts, and the impact of the accession process on the parties in conflict. The latter dimension of Europeanization has both intended and unintended effects, which in turn are likely to impinge on future developments in the eastern Mediterranean. (ECMI)

We estimate selection and sorting effects on the evolution of the private return to schooling for college graduates during China?s between 1988 and 2002. We pay special attention to the changing role of sorting by ability versus budget-constraint effects as China?s education policy has changed from one in which the bulk of direct costs are paid by government for students who pass a rigid set of test to one in which freedom of choice is increasingly the rule for those who can afford to pay for tuition and living expenses while acquiring higher education. We find evidence of substantial sorting gains under the traditional system but that gains have diminished and even become negative as schooling choices widened and participation has become subject to increasing direct private costs. We take this as evidence consistent with the influence of financial constraints on decisions to attend college.

International audience ; This article applies regulatory competition theory to an unexplored case of competition among legal norms : asylum. The asylum case study allows for a discussion of two main assumptions of regulatory competition theory: the spontaneous emergence of competition among rules and the mechanical response of regulators to market forces. The article explains to what extent the current legal framework impacts on the emergence and development of the competitive process. This framework determines the existence of a market of legal norms, it impacts on the arbiters' mobility and on States' decision to compete. The article then addresses the mechanical vision of competition. It shows that law frames the response given by regulators to market forces. It discusses the hypothesis that competing legal rules evolve in a linear way and converge. Finally, the asylum case shows the limits of competition theory's ability to explain the evolution of law.

La reflexión sobre la importancia de las disciplinas humanísticas en la formación académica y personal de los estudiantes ha originado un largo debate que históricamente ha enfrentado posiciones contrarias y que en la actualidad dista de haber acabado. En el marco de estas consideraciones cobra particular relevancia el análisis sobre la evolución de estos estudios en la Educación Secundaria española y el papel que estos contenidos tienen en los principales sistemas educativos de los países de la Unión Europea. ; The reflection on the importance of humanistic subjects in the academic and personal training of the students has started a long historical discussion between opposing positions which has not finished yet. Within this framework, the analysis of the evolution of these studies in the Spanish Secondary Education and the role of these contents in the principal educational systems of the European Union's member countries have taken a particular relevance.

The remarkable influence of the american independent regulatory agencies has been clearly reflected in the france public administration. By analysing this essay, readers may achieve the fundamental tools that will allow them to understand the nature, evolution and competences of this institution that, in spite of some constitutional difficulties related with both the regulatory and the supervisory faculties of the Government, seems to be called to perform a key role in one of the most relevant juridical systems in the european tradition. ; El impacto del modelo de administración por agencias independientes del derecho estadounidense, se ha visto reflejado con especial nitidez en la administración pública francesa. A través de este análisis, ofrecemos al lector los elementos necesarios que le permitan entender la naturaleza de estas instituciones, su origen y evolución, sus funciones y competencias, y su difícil adecuación constitucional,dentro de uno de los sistemas más representativos de la tradición jurídica continental.

'Im Zentrum der Abhandlung stehen Veränderungsprozesse, die das deutsche System der Corporate Governance in den vergangenen sieben Jahre transformiert haben. Es wird argumentiert, dass es sich in einem Prozess der Anpassung an das anglo-amerikanische System befindet und dass dieser Wandel die Wege strategischer Entscheidungsfindung in privatwirtschaftlichen Unternehmen fundamental beeinflusst. Die Veränderungen der Kapitalmärkte und die Durchsetzung des Shareholder-Value-Prinzips beeinflussen nicht nur große internationale Unternehmen, sondern greifen auch auf andere Teile der Wirtschaft durch. Diese Transformationen wirken sich sowohl auf der Ebene der Arbeitsbeziehungen als auch auf der Ebene der industriellen Beziehungen negativ aus und bedrohen das deutsche Modell diversifizierter und qualitativ hochwertiger Produktion. Derzeitige Veränderungsprozesse in den Kapitalmärkten, den Banken, den Governance-Systemen und den Unternehmen werden sowohl mit Hilfe eines theoretischen Erklärungskonzeptes institutioneller und systemischer Transformation als auch mit Hilfe einer empirischen Rückbindung des Konzeptes analysiert. Die im Vordergrund stehenden Ausführungen über Entwicklungstrends in der chemisch-pharmazeutischen Industrie werden mit Daten aus Unternehmen anderer Sektoren sowie aus dem Finanzsektor angereichert. Das theoretische Konzept institutionellen Wandels zielt auf die Erklärung der Systemlogik, der institutionellen Komplementarität, sowie der funktionalen Konversion und Hybridisierung ab. Hierbei werden sowohl systemexterne Wandlungsfaktoren als auch systeminterne handlungsmächtige Akteure berücksichtigt, die den Transformationsprozess voran treiben. Wie heraus gearbeitet wird, lässt sich der beobachtete Wandel weder mit dem Verweis auf die Bedeutung der Hybridisierung des Unternehmenssystems noch mit dem Verweis auf Anforderungen erklären, die sich aus Prozessen funktionaler Konversion und der Evolution einer neuartigen komplementären Konversion ergeben. Vielmehr lässt sich der Wandel als Anpassungsprozess des deutschen Systems der Corporate Governance analysieren.' (Autorenreferat)

The accumulating scientific evidence — across many disciplines — regarding human evolution and the dualities and complexities of human nature indicates that the core ideological assumptions of both capitalism and socialism are simplistic and ultimately irreconcilable. A biologically grounded approach to social justice enables us to articulate a new ideological paradigm that I call "Fair Shares." This paradigm consists of three complementary normative principles. First, goods and services should be distributed to each according to his or her basic needs. Second, surpluses beyond the provisioning of our basic needs should be distributed according to merit. And, third, each of us is obliged in return to contribute to the "collective survival enterprise" in accordance with his or her ability. Though none of these three principles is new, in combination they provide a biologically informed middle way between capitalism and socialism. Some of the many issues that are raised by this formulation are also briefly addressed.

Assessing competing narratives is central to our understanding of the current crisis in the Holy Land. The histories of the region give us invaluable perspectives, which, in turn, take the form of stories. The stories attending nation-building, such as 'socialist pioneers' 'making the desert bloom', effectively have shaped the world's perception of the fledgling State of Israel, obscuring even the faces of the indigenous people of Palestine (not to mention their 1948 Nakba catastrophe). The same mindset, tragically, continues to prevail among American media: lines of questioning by the 'anchor persons' on the evening news simply presume that Israel is 'us' and Palestine 'them', no matter how 'fair' the presenters try to be. This article is a philosophical attempt to reflect on the evolution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, giving both the historical background and the political context within which the current tragedy in Palestine-Israel is unfolding.