Few, if any, would deny that political parties are integral to representative democracy as we know it. And yet since the 1960s it has become increasingly commonplace to encounter references in academic literature, journalistic comment, and polemical assertion alike to the `decline of party', a contention usually predicated on the view that parties are `failing' in a variety of respects. We have...

am grateful to Mathew Tharakan for many helpful comments on an earlier draft and to Eric Reinhardt for providing a concise summary of his ongoing joint research on the Generalized System of Preferences. In addition to the references cited in the paper, this paper has benefited greatly from a number of websites that offer information on various EU preferential trade arrangements, especially thos...

R3-COP (Resilient Reasoning Robotic Co-operating Systems) aims at providing European industry with new leading-edge innovation that will enable the production of advanced robust and safe cognitive, reasoning autonomous and co-operative robotic systems at reduced cost. The major objective is to achieve cross-sector reusability of building blocks, collected in a knowledge base, by developing and ...

The enabling role of technology for effective business process management (BPM) is not being doubted. However, finding the right tool that suits a company’s specific requirements is usually a challenging task. This paper presents a novel decision framework for the critical assessment of BPM tools which maps company requirements to different levels of BPM maturity and thus aims to be applicable ...

This paper explores the relationship between cultural knowledge and the specific meaning of a pronominal adverb in legal English where Chinese translators need to get the correct translation in their venture into translating the language of law. On the one hand, relying on the relevant legal cultural knowledge functioning as domain-general reference within a community or jurisdiction, tra...

Prime objective of project APNEE has been a citizen-centred dissemination of air quality information. It was initiated during the hype of novel information services. At that point in time, content was considered as the most promising business opportunity. In addition, emerging EU directives called for novel services to advise the public on health-related instances. In this light, a multi-channe...

he water framework directive of the european union has become a milestone in the water policy for this area. this directive aims to achieve a “good ecological status” of bodies of water in the member states of the european union by 2015. the water framework directive calls for the application of economic principles, economic approaches, tools and instruments. the functions of this economic anal...