The EU’s New Black Sea Policy- What kind of regionalism is this? CEPS Working Document No. 297/July 2008.

After the accession of Bulgaria and Romania in 2007 the European Union moved quickly to fill an obvious gap in its vision of the regions to its periphery, proposing the ‘Black Sea Synergy’. The EU shows a certain degree of commonality in its approaches to each of the three enclosed seas in this region – the Baltic, the Mediterranean and now the Black Sea. While the political profiles of these maritime regions are of course very different, they naturally give rise to many common policy challenges, including those issues that are based on the technical, non-political matters of regional maritime geography. This paper sets out a typology of regionalisms and examines where in this the EU’s Black Sea Synergy is going to find its place. While the Commission’s initial proposals were highly ‘eclectic’, with various examples of ‘technical regionalism’ combined with ‘security regionalism’, there is already a diplomatic ballet in evidence between the EU and Russia, with the EU countering Russia’s pursuit of its own ‘geopolitical regionalism’. The EU would like in theory to see its efforts lead to a ‘transformative regionalism’, but the lack of agreement so far over further extending membership perspectives to countries of the region risks the outcome being placed more in the category of ‘compensatory regionalism’

From Novelty to Expectation: Recommendations to Develop a System of Campus Support for Foster Youth

As longtime funders of efforts to promote educational opportunity for current and former foster youth, the Walter S. Johnson Foundation (WSJF) and Stuart Foundation have been in the forefront of efforts to replicate successful models of campus support programs for former foster youth at public institutions of higher education in the Bay Area and Northern California. This paper was commissioned to help the funders determine what additional investments could be made to help additional campuses implement support programs and to move the field toward a "tipping point" where temporary philanthropic support for a relatively small number of demonstration programs begins to be replaced by on-going public support for the widespread replication of CSPs throughout the state's public institutions of higher education. This paper examines the challenges and barriers faced by campuses that seek to replicate campus support programs for foster youth, determine what campuses need for effective replication, and the most useful ways in which support could be delivered. In also includes a potential design for a campus support program initiative and makes recommendations for the type of intermediary needed to manage the initiative

Carers as partners in social work education

This report explores the extent and nature of participation by caregivers in the education of social work students in England. A national survey gave rise to a series of telephone interviews with education providers; regional workshops then brought together for discussion representives of carers' organisations, individual caregivers and educators. The study identified the ways in which caregivers are involved in educating social work students, the challenges experienced, the factors that facilitate positive involvement, and the outcomes experienced by those involved. The report makes a series of recommendations designed to facilitate good practice in caregiver participation in social work education

An agent-based fuzzy cognitive map approach to the strategic marketing planning for industrial firms

This is the post-print version of the final paper published in Industrial Marketing Management. The published article is available from the link below. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. Copyright @ 2013 Elsevier B.V.Industrial marketing planning is a typical example of an unstructured decision making problem due to the large number of variables to consider and the uncertainty imposed on those variables. Although abundant studies identified barriers and facilitators of effective industrial marketing planning in practice, the literature still lacks practical tools and methods that marketing managers can use for the task. This paper applies fuzzy cognitive maps (FCM) to industrial marketing planning. In particular, agent based inference method is proposed to overcome dynamic relationships, time lags, and reusability issues of FCM evaluation. MACOM simulator also is developed to help marketing managers conduct what-if scenarios to see the impacts of possible changes on the variables defined in an FCM that represents industrial marketing planning problem. The simulator is applied to an industrial marketing planning problem for a global software service company in South Korea. This study has practical implication as it supports marketing managers for industrial marketing planning that has large number of variables and their cause–effect relationships. It also contributes to FCM theory by providing an agent based method for the inference of FCM. Finally, MACOM also provides academics in the industrial marketing management discipline with a tool for developing and pre-verifying a conceptual model based on qualitative knowledge of marketing practitioners.Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (Korea

Mid-term evaluation of the support to strengthened bilateral relations under the EEA and Norway Grants

Through the EEA Grants and Norway Grants, Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein aim to reduce economic and social disparities and strengthen cooperation with 16 countries in Central and Southern Europe. A mid-term evaluation of the current EEA and Norway Grants 2009-14 was conducted by COWI during the second half of 2015 and early 2016 at the request of the Financial Mechanism Office, EEA and Norway Grants. The aim of the mid-term evaluation is to assess to what extent and in which way the EEA and Norway Grants contribute towards strengthening bilateral relations between donor and beneficiary states. The evaluation covers four out of the ten priority sectors of the EEA and Norway Grants and five of the 16 beneficiary countries (Estonia, Latvia, Poland, Romania and Slovakia), representing 19.4% of the allocated total of EUR 1.8 billion

European Citizens’ Panel on the future of Europe Bertelsmann Stiftung Evaluation Report

New forms of democratic participation are gaining ground rapidly. Many EU Member States have reacted to their citizens’ increasing demands for participation. There are more and more new ways to participate in political discussions and decision-making on both local and national level. By participating in the European Citizens’ Initiative, online consultations by the Commission, or European Citizens’ Dialogues, EU citizens can also take an active part in policymaking at the European level. A wide range of different citizens’ consultations began in EU Member States in spring 2018 on the instigation of the President of the French Republic, Emmanuel Macron, with the support of the other European heads of state and government and the European Commission. With European Parliament elections coming up in May 2019, this has prompted a transnational discussion about the future of the EU. As part of this debate, the Citizens’ Panel on the future of Europe, which was organised by the Commission and took place from 4 – 6 May 2018 (5 May: Europe Day), brought together 100 citizens from all EU27 Member States to discuss the future of Europe. Kantar, a service provider in the field of market research, working together with different organisations in the field of participation, was assigned with the the organisation and facilitation of the process. For example, participants from all over Europe were selected at random in order to represent the diversity of Europe and its citizens. The Bertelsmann Stiftung acted as an academic partner and was responsible for evaluating the event. The aim of the Citizens’ Panel was to develop 12 questions for an online survey on the future of Europe – created by EU citizens for EU citizens. Open and closed questions were combined in such a way that citizens could complete the questionnaire quickly and easily. The online survey was launched in all EU languages on 6 May 2018. Initial results are scheduled for discussion by heads of state and government in December 2018. A definitive report will be submitted on 9 May 2019 during the EU27 Summit in Sibiu, Romania