From local clientelism to populism – the case of Radu Mazăre

The fall of communism in Central and Eastern Europe imposed not only a transition towards a new regime, but also the reconstruction of the democratic institutions. That meant, as Peter Mair puts it, that the firsts to come to power had the great advantage of shaping the administration and government agencies for their own benefit. This consequently led to establishing clientelistic networks and party patronage by spoiling offices. At the same time, the new post-communist democracies had to transform themselves, from a totalitarian regime with a unique party which controlled merely every aspect of politics and society, into pluralistic societies with multiparty systems. That also meant that the political actors had to win their positions through an open and democratic electoral process, thus having to create electoral linkages in order to secure their sits. Many local political figures in post-communist Romania interpreted this new situation by buying the votes and by establishing clientelistic linkages, based on offering various goods, favors or social security benefits in the exchange of the vote and of the electoral support. These practices led to the emergence of powerful local political elites, with increased popular support and significant influence in the party structure due to their electoral linkages, the so-called local barons. This paper seeks to explore the connection between such local electoral clientelistic networks and the populist approach employed by the respective local political elites

Studies in the marketing strategy of a U.K. producer of conveyor belts

Research was undertaken in the field of marketing strategy, its formulation and implementation in Dunlop Belting Division. Emphasis was placed on marketing channel strategy, but other strategies including product strategy were studied. The research has resulted in changes in management practice in the client organisation. The relevance of theories of company organisation, planning and strategy, and marketing channels was examined in the light of the research evidence. The technique of action-research was used to gain admittance to and effect change within the client organisation. Case study material was collected for subsequent analysis. The factors affecting marketing strategy formulation in the client organisation were studied. Both the external and the internal business environments were considered. The operation of the observed marketing channels was compared with channel theory. Market segmentation and penetration, and the selling and technical resources of the channels were analysed. Recommendations were made to (a) enlarge and resite the client's distribution unit to locate it centrally in England (b) use the resited unit to secure local advantage (c) obtain greater integration of field sales activities with and from the centre. A new ex-stock distribution unit was established. Improvements to the client's ex-stock marketing in Scotland were also recommended, including improvements to the Scottish distributor's stock control procedure, as well as to Dunlop-Distributor relationships at all levels. The influence of company organisation structure and formalised procedures and systems on the formulation of strategy were considered with respect to channel and product strategy, and other aspects of marketing. Conclusions were drawn that the action research resulted in successful implementation of .agreed changes in the client organisation; that theories of strategy formulation and planning, of the operation of decentralised companies, and of industrial market segmentation required modification; that the theory of marketing channels was found relevant and useful

A coalescent dual process for a Wright-Fisher diffusion with recombination and its application to haplotype partitioning

Duality plays an important role in population genetics. It can relate results from forwards-in-time models of allele frequency evolution with those of backwards-in-time genealogical models; a well known example is the duality between the Wright–Fisher diffusion for genetic drift and its genealogical counterpart, the coalescent. There have been a number of articles extending this relationship to include other evolutionary processes such as mutation and selection, but little has been explored for models also incorporating crossover recombination. Here, we derive from first principles a new genealogical process which is dual to a Wright–Fisher diffusion model of drift, mutation, and recombination. The process is reminiscent of the ancestral recombination graph , a widely-used multilocus genealogical model, but here ancestral lineages are typed and transition rates are regarded as being conditioned on an observed configuration at the leaves of the genealogy. Our approach is based on expressing a putative duality relationship between two models via their infinitesimal generators, and then seeking an appropriate test function to ensure the validity of the duality equation. This approach is quite general, and we use it to find dualities for several important variants, including both a discrete L-locus model of a gene and a continuous model in which mutation and recombination events are scattered along the gene according to continuous distributions. As an application of our results, we derive a series expansion for the transition function of the diffusion. Finally, we study in further detail the case in which mutation is absent. Then the dual process describes the dispersal of ancestral genetic material across the ancestors of a sample. The stationary distribution of this process is of particular interest; we show how duality relates this distribution to haplotype fixation probabilities. We develop an efficient method for computing such probabilities in multilocus models

Molecular imaging of tumor-associated angiogenesis using a novel magnetic resonance imaging contrast agent targeting αvβ3 integrin

The recent introduction of biological anticancer therapy has renewed the interest in functional imaging of tumor-associated angiogenesis (TAA) as a tool to monitor early therapy response. The present study evaluated imaging of TAA using P1227, a novel, small molecular magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) probe targeting alpha(v)beta(3) integrin. HT29 human colorectal cancers were grown in athymic mice. Dynamic MRI was performed using a three-dimensional VIBE sequence up to 110 min after injection of P1227 or gadolinium-tetraazacyclododecane tetraacetic acid (Gd-DOTA). Specificity was assessed by using P1227 1 h after intravenous administration of the alpha(v)beta(3) inhibitor cilengitide. Regions of interest were drawn encompassing the tumor rim and normal muscle. Imaging data were compared with microvessel density and alpha(v)beta(3) expression. Using P1227, specific enhancement of the angiogenic tumor rim, but not of normal muscle, was observed, whereas Gd-DOTA enhanced tumor and normal muscle. After administering cilengitide, enhancement with P1227, but not with DOTA, was significantly suppressed during the first 20 min. When using P1227, a significant correlation was observed between normalized enhancement of the tumor rim and immunohistochemical alpha(v)beta(3) integrin expression. Molecular MRI using a small monogadolinated tracer targeting alpha(v)beta(3) integrin and moderate magnetic field strength holds promise in assessing colorectal TAA