here is a long and beneficial tradition of international collaboration in science and technology. There are, however, trends working against collaboration, and tensions between (for example) collaboration and competition, and European integration and increasing emphasis on national competitiveness. It is therefore important to have a clear understanding of when and in what form international collaboration is desirable. This paper considers these issues, drawing lessons from CERN – the European Laboratory for Particle Physics. CERN, which pioneered European collaboration, is now becoming in a sense a world organization. Physicists from 47 countries will participate in experiments at CERN's next project, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), which is set to be the first megascience project constructed by a global partnership, driven ‘bottom up’ by the scientists involved. CERN's experience with the LHC could provide an excellent precedent for other projects.

In recent years, the notion of ‘excellence’ and its interconnectedness with research, development and innovations has become extremely popular across Europe. At regional and national as well as at the EU level, various initiatives have been taken to strengthen the science base, and to establish centres, or clusters of outstanding achievements. Researchers, universities, and funding agencies will have to work their way towards a culture of creativity, which needs a leap of faith based on the high-trust principles of governance and accountability, and which provides more space for risk-taking and thorough rethinking of common wisdom in order to achieve real breakthroughs at the frontiers of knowledge.

In Europe there have appeared several important collections on Marxist literary theory, such as Francis Mulhern’s Contemporary Marxist Literary Criticism (1992) and Terry Eagleton and Drew Milne’s Marxist Literary Theory: A Reader (1996). However, Chinese voices are not included at all in these volumes. Maybe this lacuna results from a lack of awareness of Chinese Marxist aesthetics on the part of most European literary historians and critics. In this article, we seek to discuss the circumstances of European scholars’ contacts with Chinese Marxist aesthetics, mainly in the 1960s and 1970s. Starting from the variation theory perspective proposed by Shunqing Cao we will discuss how European scholars read and misread what they perceived as the meaning and universal applicability of what was happening in China at the time. The discussion is divided into three parts: the utopian interpretation of the Chinese theory of revolution in France, the critical reception by Eastern European Marxists, and the sympathetic interpretation by sinologists such as the Dutch diplomat and literary scholar Douwe Fokkema.

Using water for body treatments has an especially long tradition in many cultures and, is deeply intertwined with Roman and Ottoman culture. However, it is clear that today it is not possible to attribute bathing – not even a specific type of bathing, such as the hammam steam bath – to one particular culture (ignoring the obvious problems associated with trying to delineate clearly between such blurred constructs as a specific culture or as a discrete entity). Thus, the ‘Turkish bath’ is a widely used term introduced to Europe in the eighteenth century or applied to various different manifestations. The term reflects the European perception of Turkish bathing culture, primarily connected with bathing within a hammam complex or – as the Turkish term goes – a hammami. Bathing in the hammam-style is rather a Roman cultural practice, an element adapted and integrated in Ottoman culture and readapted thereafter into modern Western culture. It is often believed that these practices are rooted in the cultural history of the present state of Turkey (although ancient ‘Turkish bath’ architecture famously exists in Greece or Albania, too1). Furthermore, the geographical or architectural nexus between mosques and hammams and, also, the temporal order of Islamic culture (in which visiting a hammam before various ritual occasions is required) have often suggested seeing the Turkish bath as a religious custom.

The environment has many of the properties that economists associate with the concept of a public good. It has long been realized that, if left to itself, the market economy is likely to lead to an undersupply of public goods and, in the environmental area, to an insufficient use of resources to preserve environmental quality. Economics research in this area has concentrated on three central issues. First, exactly why is it that a market economy fails to allocate resources efficiently in the presence of environmental public goods or externalities? Second, how can one assess the economic value of environmental goods? Third, what kinds of policy are best suited for the protection of the environment, e.g. should one rely on tax and price incentives or on quantitative regulations? This article discusses these questions and also describes the evolution of the economic perspective on the environment, from a concern with local problems to focus on international and global issues of environmental pollution.

European Union (EU) coexistence policy is based on the principle of subsidiarity, which implies a multilevel governance framework. Different legislative approaches have been developed in EU Member States. These legal rules are oriented to both preventing on-farm adventitious admixture (ex-ante regulations) and reducing potential economic consequences (ex-post liability). So coexistence deals with a subject of negative externalities involving an issue of property-right allocation between farmers. Considering the impacts that coexistence policy has on GM (genetically modified) crop adoption rates and the generation of trade distortions, potential effects of the EU coexistence framework are reviewed from a theoretical property-right allocation view. Derived from the analysis, property-right allocation is focused on non-GM farmers according to EU regulation enforcement, which tends to rigid coexistence measures. Nonetheless, the multilevel EU framework has led Member States to pursue their aims: trade interests and social legitimation.

Although the European Union (EU) has a Common European Asylum System (CEAS), the policy stance of the Member States towards the Syrian crisis caused some problems in the implementation of the CEAS. Within this context, Turkey has turned into the most important partner of the EU due to the fact that it prevents the entrance of the asylum-seekers into the territory of the Member States. Therefore, the Syrian issue has become a bargaining chip between Turkey and the EU. This article examines the Europeanization process of Turkey’s asylum policy as well as the development of the CEAS and its implementation with respect to Syrian refugees within the EU.

The European Union (EU) has suffered from fall-out recently. Clear cases in point were the anti-EU outcomes of the referenda in France and the Netherlands, as well as the messy process in response to the Euro crisis. More broadly, recent elections in many European countries have resulted in winning parties that advertise an explicit anti-EU sentiment, often linked to an equally explicit anti-immigrant stance. Apparently, in the eyes of many, the EU is not delivering – quite to the contrary. In this essay, insights from a variety of social sciences will be reviewed that may shed light on this issue, with a focus on the role of a multidimensional conception of diversity.

On the rare occasions when Japan's relations with Europe are examined, they tend to be fixed within a trilateral structure at whose apex is the United States. This triangular framework was established in the aftermath of World War II, as a result of direct American involvement in the socio-economic reconstruction of Japan and the major countries of Western Europe. The current article examines how the very nature of the triangular relationship has changed over time, with the result that the trilateralism of the 1990s – in contrast to its earlier form – has served to facilitate the development of bilateral relations between Japan and the European Union and its member states.

This study examines the short-run response of daily stock prices in the Spanish market to the announcements of inflation news at a sector level at the moments when the Spanish authorities announced the IPC (consumer price index) during the period 1995–2004. The study also incorporates two novel explanatory variables: core inflation and ‘non-core’ inflation rate components on the one hand, and the spread between the Spanish and European inflation rates (harmonized) on the other hand. It is concluded that the ‘non-core’ component of the inflation rate, which is more volatile, has negative effects on some sector returns; additionally, in drawing too far apart from the European inflation rate, the Spanish inflation rate negatively affects sector returns, such as in the ‘Consumer Goods’ sector, which is subject to strong foreign competition. In the long-term analysis, the lagged core inflation (structural component) negatively affects sector returns.

The article argues that the question of this Focus about national models versus local aspirations must be supplemented with the question of a European dimension. The question is whether a European social model is conceivable in parallel to or beyond the local, the regional and the national models. The article argues that the question of prosperity in Europe must have a reasonable dimension of political redistribution of the fruits of economic growth. The concept of prosperity does not only have a bearing on the economic but also on the social. The article critically discusses the concepts of model and path dependency. Model is seen as a stereotype emerging in the dynamics between reflection on Self and imagination of the Other. Path dependencies are seen as trajectories laid out towards the past for a better understanding of the present, as ex post mental constructions, but they have no or little prognostic value. The argument is for a soft version of path dependency as a heuristic tool as opposed to hard versions with an ambition of prediction. The problem with the concept as such is that it is inscribed in a long tradition of ideals of predictability in social sciences based on a structural instead of a constructivist view of history and society.

With the Meiji Restoration the first steps were taken in the third quarter of the 19th century to set up a national system of education in Japan. European educational theories were influential. Samuel Smiles became a reference for moral principles and Western heroes from Socrates to Florence Nightingale were exemplars. The articles explores the complex relationship of Western ideas with indigenous Japanese culture.

After considering the evolution of thoughts about the origin of the Universe since antiquity, the evolution of scientific methods is described. The current view on the origin of the universe is considered in the light of these methods

Innovation has become a leading slogan for world economies, politicians and science policy-makers alike. It is the driving force of Western consumer societies, which have come to expect the new to be replaced by the newest. However, in contrast to mere fads and fashions, the consequences of relentless innovation are real. They manifest themselves in changes in lifestyle, in the ways societies function and in profound changes in outlook and perception. This paper will ask how innovation became so central and which mechanisms sustain it in science and technology, art and individual life. One consequence to be further explored is the relative loss in importance of the individual creative act, with implications on how we view creativity, knowledge production and even the concept of the individual. Another question to be raised is that of the multiplicity of the new: despite the seeming diversity and multiplicity of option, is there also convergence or a process of synchronization at work?

Oswald Spengler (1880–1936) was one of the most significant thinkers of the Weimar Republic, Germany’s first democracy. His work, notably the two-volume, 1200-page Der Untergang des Abendlandes (Decline of the West, 1918/22), had a profound influence on the intellectual discourses of the time in Germany and beyond.1 Yet, despite the high esteem in which he was held by his contemporaries, his thought has been seriously under-researched. In English, only four major studies have appeared in the last 70 years.2 This is all the more surprising in that the historical period in which he wrote has been extensively covered by both English- and German-language scholars and that some of the thinkers who drew critically on his ideas, such as Heidegger and Adorno, have become household names in Germany intellectual history.

A new leading actor has been added to the Cyprus Conflict. The winner of the Presidential elections held on the morning of Sunday, 26 April 2015, in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (Kuzey Kıbrıs Türk Cumhuriyeti – TRNC) was the independent candidate Mustafa Akıncı. Both Nicos Anastasiades, who was elected President of the Republic of Cyprus in 2013, and Akıncı are rare leaders supporting the Fifth Annan Plan, which was rejected in a referendum by the Greek Cypriots in 2004. One of the most vital catalysts that could play a role in the resolution of the Cyprus Conflict is a charismatic leader who aims for the resolution of the conflict. Whether the current Presidents have this personality and can change the current balances that are monopolized by the conservatives-nationalists on the Island will be revealed as a result of the negotiations. This article briefly tackles the UN parameters relative to the Cyprus Conflict and addresses the problems awaiting Presidents Anastasiades and Akıncı during the peace negotiations that have started anew.

The number, scale and variety of threats to the safety of the contemporary world are forcing multilateral cooperation to tighten. The United Nations is the main forum of such cooperation and has a vast spectrum of powers. In addition the European Union tries to act in a similar way, although on a much smaller scale. Both organizations, then, seem to have much in common and appear to be mutual partners. Is this cooperation really going as well as one would expect? Do they treat each other as equal partners? This article tries to answer these questions and more.