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THE AUTHOR REFLECTS ON THE SCHOLARSHIP OF NORMAN SCHOFIELD, FOCUSING ON "POLITICAL COMPETITION AND MULTIPARTY COALITION GOVERNMENTS." IN THIS ESSAY, SCHOFIELD OFFERED A COMPETITIVE TWO-DIMENSIONAL MODEL OF MULTIPARTY COALITION BEHAVIOR.

"Der Vortrag bemüht sich um einen soziologischen Beitrag zur gegenwärtigen Debatte um den Sozial- und Wirtschaftsstandort Deutschland. Die rein kostenorientierte Sichtweise, die auf hohe Sozial- und Lohnkosten abstellt, wird um eine Perspektive ergänzt, die in der vergleichenden Sozial-Ökonomie zunehmend Aufmerksamkeit genießt: die These, daß soziales Kapital eine wichtige Grundlage ökonomischer Wettbewerbsfähigkeit ist. Diese These wird in vier Schritten zur Diskussion gestellt: Zunächst wird das Konzept des sozialen Kapitals vorgestellt. Sodann wird die These seines Zusammenhanges mit der wirtschaftlichen Leistungsfähigkeit mittels einiger empirischer Untersuchungen erläutert. In einem dritten Abschnitt soll gezeigt werden, daß die Bundesrepublik in diesem Bereich vergleichsweise gut dasteht. Im Schlußabschnitt schließlich sollen einerseits einige Konsequenzen aus diesem Befund für die Standortdiskussion und andererseits einige offene Fragen einer sozio-ökonomischen Erklärung ökonomischer Performanz erörtert werden." (Autorenreferat)

Nomination: In search of the 'big:rsquo; model of political competition by Michael Laver, p.179 Reflections: Coalition politics and representative democracy by Norman Schofield, p.183

In the period covered by this note (early 1994 to the middle of 1995) some signifi cant and interesting judgments have been handed down by the Court of Justice and the Court of First Instance on both substantive and procedural issues of competition law, in particular that of the Court of Justice in the Magill case, which deals with the relationship between Article 86 and intellectual property rights. In the legislative field there is now a group exemption on the operation of liner transport services. As regards general problems of enforcement, the Commission's 1993 Notice on Co-operation between National Courts and the Commission1 has provoked a good deal of discussion and a number of commentators and also the Commission itself are now advocating sharing responsibility for enforcement with national competition authorities rather than relying on the direct effect of Articles 85(1) and 86 being invoked before national courts.2

The period under consideration (mid-1995 to March 1998) was a relatively quiet one for Article 85. Note should be taken of the publication in 1997 of the Commission's Green Paper on vertical restraints in competition policy,1 which is likely to lead to a significant overhaul of a number of block exemption regulations. The existing block exemptions on patent licensing and know-how agreements2 were merged into a new single block exemption on technology transfer.3 Perhaps the most interesting and potentially far-reaching development was the Commission decision in Bayer/Adalat,4 in which the Commission characterised as agreements—and so falling within Article 85—attempts by the German chemicals group Bayer to limit supplies of a range of pharmaceutical products from its wholly owned distributors in other member States to wholesalers there in order to stem parallel exports. This was not an Article 86 case (Bayer was not dominant in the relevant product market), of which refusal to sell is more commonly a feature, and an agreement between manufacturer and distributor/wholesaler which prohibits re-export of the contract goods has long been recognised as falling within Article 85(1). But in Bayer/Adalat the wholesalers never agreed to the (alleged) export ban, and in fact resisted Bayer's attempts to limit supplies both directly and by subterfuge. Nevertheless, the Commission found an agreement between the Bayer distributors and the wholesalers, effectively simply in continuing to deal, the former having committed "an infringement of Article 85(1) by imposing an export ban as part of their continuous commercial relations with [the latter]",5 the ban having "been agreed [sic] as part of their ongoing business relations".6