Suchergebnisse

Introduction to the EPSJ syposium of European defense in the light of the Ukariane war.

The flow of foreign fighters leaving for Iraq and the Syrian Arab Republic has slowed, but they often still pose a serious threat, either by encouraging others toward violence or by directly assisting themselves in a terrorist attack after their return. This article studies the effect of a country's active involvement in a conflict zone on the flow of foreign fighters. Specifically, we test whether a nation's participation in the international coalition against Daesh influences its number of foreign fighters. Despite the small sample size resulting from limited official data on foreign fighters, we report several interesting insights for cautious interpretation and only regarding the countries included. Findings from a negative binomial model suggest that a country's active international role against Daesh also increases the foreign fighters coming from that country. Hence, it is important to keep in mind that the cost of a military intervention can be higher than the cost of the operation itself. Policymakers should also account for the cost of the increased number of foreign fighters and the resulting threat.

The regulatory framework concerning defense procurement has evolved considerably since the start of the millennium. In addition to the general Public Procurement Directive and the Defense Procurement Directive, the European Commission recently formulated a proposal for a Foreign Subsidies Regulation (FSR). Nonetheless, defense sector particularities continue to produce tensions in public procurement, and significant blind spots remain.In view of policy objectives to strengthen the European Defense Technological & Industrial Base (EDTIB), it is necessary to first study the current state of EU defense procurement. To that end, we perform an analysis of 14,207 EU27-tenders spanning the period 2009-2020. In addition, a case study approach investigates six tender procedures by the Belgian military, establishing material points of note.Key insights include: (1) the number of defense procurement procedures won by third country bidders is limited, (2) tenders won by non-EU27-tenderers are larger and less competitive on average, and (3) an overly strong focus on price efficiency in public procurement award procedures inhibits attaining EDTIB goals. In short, the data shows a chasm between stated policy aims of strengthening the EDTIB through positive action in public procurement, on the one hand, and public procurement practices, on the other.

AbstractMost principal–agent literature of nonprofit organizations has focused on the relationship between board members and managers. However, in addition to the role as an agent of the board, the manager also performs a role as principal with respect to the nonprofit employees. By using a discrete choice experiment, we identify the objectives of managers and employees in nonprofit organizations and assess the presence of agency problems in this relationship. Our sample consists of 76 headmasters, 161 teachers, and 39 administrative employees in 74 secondary nonprofit schools in Belgium. We find that the six objectives set out in the experiment play an important role for both headmasters and subordinate staff. However, the results also indicate that some of these objectives are significantly more important for the headmasters. In sum, our results suggest that agency theory and stewardship theory are not necessarily in conflict with each other but can be combined into a more general governance framework for nonprofit organizations. Consequently, we argue that incentive structures that incorporate different types of objectives can facilitate the recruitment and retention of employees in nonprofit organizations.