Beyond Frozen Conflict Scenarios for the Separatist Disputes of Eastern Europe. CEPS Paperback

This book forms part of a wider project on the relations between the European Union and Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine, and in particular the Association Agreements and Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Areas (DCFTAs) between these three states and the European Union. The wider project was begun in 2015 in the aftermath of the Maidan uprising at the beginning of 2014, which had been provoked when President Yanukovich reneged over the signing of Ukraine’s Association Agreement with the EU. Following Yanukovich’s flight to Russia, the Association Agreement was duly signed later in 2014. The agreements with Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine have a substantial common content, while differing in various details. Overall, they provide an association model of unprecedented extent and depth. Democratic political values are at the heart of the agreements, while the economic content goes far beyond classic free trade agreements to include a wholesale approximation of EU internal market regulatory law. The purpose of our wider project was first of all to explain the complex content of the Association Agreements and DCFTAs, which was achieved in a series of comprehensive handbooks published at www.3dcftas.eu. However, the agreements contain only short and simple articles on conflict prevention and management, without meaningful operational content. This was notwithstanding the fact that the EU considers itself, for its own historical reasons, to have a special vocation in conflict prevention and resolution. In addition, Georgia and Moldova were already the sites of unresolved separatist conflicts originating around the collapse of the Soviet Union three decades ago, namely Abkhazia and South Ossetia in Georgia, and Transdniestria in Moldova, to which we have added the case of the Nagorny Karabakh between Armenia and Azerbaijan. On top of this legacy, the Maidan uprising led to the Russian annexation of Crimea and its hybrid war in the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts of the Donbas. The Donbas thus joined the old ‘frozen conflicts’. In the light of the above, CEPS took the initiative to examine all five unresolved conflicts, to assess where these disputes seem to be heading, and what different scenarios could be imagined for their future, including how the European Union might become more engaged. Indeed, while none of the conflicts are resolved, none are for that matter ‘frozen’. Our first practical priority was to find an author to undertake a comprehensive study of the Donbas, since conditions there make it practically impossible for any analysts from the government-controlled part of Ukraine or from Europe to safely enter these territories for research purposes. We were therefore very fortunate to find Nikolaus von Twickel who had recently been travelling in the Donbas as part of the OSCE Mission there, and is now an independent analyst. For the other four ‘old’ conflicts we were also most fortunate to bring in Thomas de Waal, who has been a leading scholar of the region for some decades, and was willing to bring the stories of these conflicts up to date. The two authors were able to address the complete set of conflicts with a consistent analytical approach, as will be evident from reading the sets of scenarios. We express our warm appreciation towards Sweden and the Swedish International Development Agency (Sida) for their support to the entire project. This volume looks at future prospects for the string of unresolved conflicts that continue to plague the post-Soviet world. Four of them date back to the period when the USSR began to break up in the late 1980s. A new conflict, with many different elements and some similarities, was added to the list in 2014: the Donbas in eastern Ukraine. The open confrontation between Russia and Ukraine over the Donbas and Crimea not only destroyed relations between Moscow and Kyiv but changed politics across the region, shaking up the dynamics of the four existing protracted territorial conflicts over Abkhazia, Nagorny Karabakh, South Ossetia and Transdniestria. The five post-Soviet conflicts are often called ‘frozen’, but this is a misnomer. Although the peace processes around them often look frozen, the situations themselves are anything but frozen and are constantly changing. Two of them, over the Donbas and Nagorny Karabakh, are either ongoing or close to violence. Each dispute has its own history, character and context, which has grown more distinctive over time and has been further shaped by the confrontation over Ukraine. Each continues to evolve. Here we chart scenarios for how these conflicts may develop further with the aim of focusing policymakers’ thinking on which tendencies are dangerous and which ones can be encouraged. There are many moving parts to these situations and complacency is not an option

Electric Flux Sectors and Confinement

We study the fate of static fundamental charges in the thermodynamic limit from Monte-Carlo simulations of SU(2) with suitable boundary conditions.Comment: Presented by L.v.S. at the NATO Advanced Research Workshop "Confinement, Topology, and other Non-Perturbative Aspects of QCD", Jan. 21-27, 2002, Stara Lesna, Slovakia., 8 pages, 4 figures (8 ps-files, epsfig.sty), uses crckapb.cl

A toy model of (grand) unified monopoles

We explore the old idea that, in a theory containing several gauge groups, the topological defects of one gauge group coincide with those of another gauge group. This simple 'unification' constraint has deep consequences, the best known of which is a natural explanation of the fractional electric charge of quarks. Here we explore the consequences of this idea for the phase diagram, in a toy model U(1)x U(1).Comment: PoS(LAT2005)314, 6 pages, 3 figures, for the proceedings of 'Lattice 2005 (Topology and Confinement).

User Innovation in SMEs: Incidence and Transfer to Producers

The contribution of this paper is threefold. Firstly, we measure the incidence of user innovation in a broad sample of firms. Previous work has collected repeated evidence on the frequency of user innovation in a variety of industries and products, but so far its incidence has not been demonstrated in samples of larger business populations. Secondly, we assess if current innovation surveys adequately capture user innovation. Surveys such as the CIS (Community Innovation Survey) take a producer perspective and seem to overlook that in practice many innovation efforts are done by users to satisfy their process needs. Thirdly, we explore to what extent user innovations are transferred to producer firms. In doing so we assess if user innovation is marked by voluntary spillovers which is a strong argument to justify policies for user innovation. Drawing on survey data of 2 416 SMEs in the Netherlands, we find that 21% of all SMEs engage in user innovation, i.e. they develop and/or significantly modify existing techniques, equipment or software to satisfy their own process-related needs. We also find that user innovation is remains largely invisible in the current innovation surveys. Next, in a survey of technology-based small firms in the Netherlands we identified 364 specific user innovations. We found that users tend not to patent or protect their innovations, and that one out of four is transferred to producers. The data suggest a significant feedstock of voluntary knowledge spillovers from users to producer firms. We conclude that future innovation surveys should explicitly capture user innovation, and develop some recommendations to guide this effort. We also plea for more research on policies for user innovation.

Open, distributed and user-centered: Towards a paradigm shift in innovation policy

Today's innovation policies ignore that innovation is increasingly open, distributed and user-centered. In this paper we introduce the user-centered model as an alternative paradigm of how innovation 'works'. We discuss how it differs from traditional, linear producer-centered model, argue why it is legitimate to develop policies in support of it, and provide specific directions. �

TreeWatch.net : a water and carbon monitoring and modeling network to assess instant tree hydraulics and carbon status

TreeWatch.net is an initiative that has been developed to watch trees grow and function in real-time. It is a water- and carbon-monitoring and modeling network, in which high quality measurements of sap flow and stem diameter variation are collected on individual trees. Automated data processing using a cloud service enables instant visualization of water movement and radial stem growth. This can be used to demonstrate the sensitivity of trees to changing weather conditions, such as drought, heat waves, or heavy rain showers. But TreeWatch.net's true innovation lies in its use of these high precision harmonized data to also parameterize process-based tree models in real-time, which makes displaying the much needed mechanisms underlying tree responses to climate change possible. Continuous simulation of turgor to describe growth processes and long-term time series of hydraulic resistance to assess drought-vulnerability in real-time are only a few of the opportunities our approach offers. TreeWatch.net has been developed with the view to be complementary to existing forest monitoring networks and with the aim to contribute to existing dynamic global vegetation models. It provides high-quality data and real-time simulations in order to advance research on the impact of climate change on the biological response of trees and forests. Besides its application in natural forests to answer climate-change related scientific and political questions, we also envision a broader societal application of TreeWatch.net by selecting trees in nature reserves, public areas, cities, university areas, schoolyards, and parks to teach youngsters and create public awareness on the effects of changing weather conditions on trees and forests in this era of climate change

More on Electric and Magnetic Fluxes in SU(2)

The free energies of static charges and center monopoles are given by their fluxes. While electric fluxes show the universal behaviour of the deconfinement transition, the monopole free energies vanish in the thermodynamic limit at all temperatures and are thus irrelevant for the transition. Magnetic fluxes may, however, be used to measure the topological susceptibility without cooling.Comment: 3 pages, LaTeX2e (ws-procs9x6.cls), 1 eps-figure, talk presented by L.v.S. at Quark Confinement and the Hadron Spectrum V, Gargnano, Italy, September 10-14, 200

Public transportation in UK viewed as a complex network

In this paper we investigate the topological and spatial features of public transport networks (PTN) within the UK. Networks investigated include London, Manchester, West Midlands, Bristol, national rail and coach networks during 2011. Using methods in complex network theory and statistical physics we are able to discriminate PTNs with respect to their stability; which is the first of this kind for national networks. Moreover, taking advantage of various fractal properties we gain useful insights into the serviceable area of stations. These features can be employed as key performance indicators in aid of further developing efficient and stable PTNs.Comment: 23 pages, 9 figure

't Hooft loops and consistent order parameters for confinement

We study ratios of partition functions in two types of sectors of SU(2), with fixed temporal center flux and with static fundamental charge. Both can be used as bona fide order parameters for the deconfinement transition.Comment: 3 Pages, LaTeX 2.09 with espcrc2.sty, 4 Figures (epsfig), for Lattice2001(confinement