Brazil's GPA accession will involve costs and benefits

Significance The agreement would open a market of USD1.7tn for Brazilian companies to compete for government procurement contracts internationally, but would also render them vulnerable to competition for Brazilian government contracts from foreign suppliers on equal terms. The process of negotiations is a lengthy one, as well as controversial. Impacts Accession to the GPA could facilitate Brazil’s ambition to join the OECD. Domestic companies’ lack of competitiveness within the GPA could aggravate existing problems with industrial performance. Political uncertainties surrounding the October elections could delay the pace of accession.

Does Technical Analysis Win?

The main goal of this chapter is to analyze the performance of four investment strategies within a recent period of international political uncertainties. RSI and MACD supported three competing investment strategies, which were compared to the conservative Buy and Hold strategy. Euro Stoxx 50 Index was selected through the Markowitz Theory, and the DAX index was established as a benchmark. The period considered was between the start of Donald Trump's official campaign to the US elections and the first date set for Brexit. Two subsequent additional studies were performed to evaluate their profitability. The entry and exit points were determined by international economic reports. Alternative time lengths for the RSI window were considered. The results suggest that, when the market is bear or undefined, the investor should have a strategy supported on technical analysis and he should consider more than one indicator to increase the information that is taken from the market. The passive Buy and Hold strategy should be considered when the market is considered a bull market.

"A lady to take care of us at last"

This essay explores the depiction of the “New Woman” figure in J. M. Barrie’s Peter and Wendy (1911). By exploring contradictory modes of femininity, Barrie’s novel points to the ways in which established norms of masculinity at the fin-de-siècle were defined and frustrated by their relation to an unstable feminine ideal. The following essay will argue that the novel’s inconsistent depictions of femininity point to an end-of-the-era anxiety surrounding the emergent New Woman, an ambivalence which is symptomatic of the wider social and political uncertainties that defined the aftermath of the nineteenth century.

The Brexit effect: Political implications of the exit of the United Kingdom from the European Union

Brexit has brought tensions in European and (especially) British politics. This article illustrates the rationale, scope and research questions of the special issue, which investigates the first Brexit effects in the five years following the 2016 referendum. Taking the distribution of political power as our primary focus and analysing mainly – though not exclusively – British politics, we trace the first developments in the three domains of politics, polity and policy since the UK’s decision to leave the EU. In the politics domain, after the political uncertainties surrounding the referendum period, we detect a return to the power-hoarding dynamics typical of the Westminster model. However, the territorial and constitutional architectures of the British polity are under considerable strain, with Brexit strengthening the nationalistic movements in Scotland and Northern Ireland. In the policy domain, despite strong common interests, Brexit has failed to produce cooperative EU–UK arrangements in finance and foreign policy.

Visions of Personal Future among Adolescents with Different Orientations Toward Educational Mobility

Research of contemporary societies emphasises the importance of global economic circumstances, political uncertainties and social inequalities for young people’s visions of their personal future. This research is focused on general and career-specific aspects of adolescents' visions of personal future and how these relate to adolescents' orientation toward educational mobility. Educational mobility is determined by the equivalence/non-equivalence of parents’ levels of education and their offspring’s educational aspirations as expressed at the end of secondary schooling. According to this principle, three groups of participants were defined and their differences were analysed with respect to (a) general aspects of their visions of personal future, (b) career-specific aspects of their envisioned future, and (c) the perception of factors on which the achievement of career visions will depend. Significant differences among the three groups have been found in general and career-specific visions of the future. The findings of the study indicate that students who plan to attend university are more preoccupied with career and perceive personal characteristics as more important factors for achieving career goals than students without such plans. Finally, this paper suggests that, in order to fully understand young people’s visions of personal future from a micro and a macro perspective, it is fruitful to integrate psychological and sociological approaches.

Politics and tourism within South-East Asia.

This chapter examines the interactions between politics and international tourism which are shown to be inextricably linked in assorted ways. The focus of the discussion is on members of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN). After some general observations with regards to the tourism-politics relationship, the chapter looks back to the 1970s when political uncertainties and upheavals characterized parts of the region and impeded tourism. Such circumstances are then contrasted with those of the current era which tend to be more settled, reflecting the political shifts occurring in the intervening years, and which are more favourable for tourism.

Institutional barriers to participation in EU framework programs: contrasting the Swiss and UK cases

The aim of this study was to examine how institutional barriers arising from policy decisions influence the level of participation of third-party countries in European Framework Programs (EU-FPs). To achieve this, we contrasted the effect of EU funding restrictions following Switzerland’s 2014 reclassification as a “third country” in Horizon 2020, and the political uncertainties resulting from the 2016 Brexit vote in the United Kingdom (UK). We compared the participation patterns of Swiss and UK higher education institutions (HEIs) with control groups of similar European HEIs over time and, complementarily, analyzed changes in the participation of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Our results showed that the Brexit-induced uncertainty had stronger negative effects than the Swiss reclassification, which was, however, characterized by effective EU funding restrictions. In both cases, the negative impact of institutional barriers was stronger for the more central HEIs in EU-FP networks. These results suggest that the effect of institutional barriers is closely linked to consortium building mechanisms, where research collaboration requires stability and projection over the long term. Regarding individual grants, the impact was stronger for Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions than for European Research Council grants, suggesting that a researcher’s mobility is affected by political uncertainties. Finally, in the UK case, we observed a steep decrease in the participation of SMEs. Based on these results, we suggest that a stable framework of participation and a clear ruling on relationships with the EU for what concerns people’s mobility and economic relationships are key to fostering the participation of third-party countries.

The populist style and public diplomacy: kayfabe as performative agonism in Trump’s Twitter posts

This article theorises the interplay between public diplomacy and populism. Building on Baudrillard’s simulacra, we advance the hybridity approach to soft power statecraft by analysing a cultural shift in US presidential public diplomacy. Using discourse analysis, we uncover how, rather than aiding the building of relationship with foreign publics, Donald Trump has brought to the field cultural codes alien to public diplomacy, imploding the meanings central to the endogenous norms of diplomacy and turning towards an agonistic relational dynamic with foreign publics. This article reveals how digitalisation affords the expansion of Donald Trump’s populist style, and makes the populist cultural shift highly visible on his Twitter. To reveal this dynamic in granular detail, we propose ‘kayfabe’ as an epistemic lens for the interpretation of the populist style in the conduct of Trump’s ‘simulated public diplomacy’, a defining feature of the current US global leadership. As well as considering socialities re-shaping relational dynamics, this article unpacks tensions stemming from the expansion of populist style into presidential public diplomacy. Finally, we reflect on the epistemic crisis of US public diplomacy within the strategic landscape of political uncertainties associated with the proliferation of populism in the field.

The Trucial Gulf States and Their Role in International Politics

The study focuses on International Relation behavior of Gulf Trucial states seeking security in the wake of perceived regional and international threats. The Gulf States including and other despotic regimes in the region have been found abandoning wider regional Interest and joining Western Power and recently even Israel which is political most contested regime in the region. Gulf States are cluster of small but rich and militarily weaker states. This makes them dependent on big or influential regional and International powers. The personal and despotic family rules in Gulf state have mostly been depended for their sustenance on internationally powerful states for their defense and protection against internal and external threats. The native political movements like Muslim Brotherhood Palestinians who are supported mutually make a case of internal threats for the authoritative and despotic Gulf States Emirates. The movements in Middle East seek wider change on their agenda and the end of concentration of power The study find that personal and despotic rules ignore major political issue and their settlement to sustain their grip on power. This facilitates a short term sustenance at the cost of a bigger regional threat. This political trending of the Gulf States also entails domestic discontent which can sow seeds for future political uncertainties and discontent leading to regional security dilemma and escalated conflicts and confrontations. Paper recommends good relations conditioned with mutual reciprocity and accommodation for sustaining peace in the region to have positive impact on International peace.

Party (de)institutionalization in times of political uncertainty: The case of the Justice and Development Party in Turkey

Recently many polities around the world as different as Hungary, Turkey, Venezuela, Thailand suffer from autocratization. This has led to a growing scholarly interest in the process of autocratization. Yet, despite this emerging generation of studies on democratic setbacks, we still do not know much about the changing nature of party politics in the process of autocratization. We argue, in this article, that during autocratization, the incumbent party follows the path of internal and external party deinstitutionalization in response to the changing nature and intensity of political uncertainties. Using the case of the Justice and Development Party in Turkey, we address three questions: (1) How can the concept of party de-institutionalization be revised and used to understand party transformation during autocratization? (2) What explains party deinstitutionalization in transitional contexts? (3) What is the relationship between party de-institutionalization and autocratization? In doing so, this article increases our understanding of party transformation in transitional contexts and more specifically incumbent party change in the process of autocratization by providing a causal theory of party deinstitutionalization.