This collected volume represents the final outcome of the COST Action IS1104 “The EU in the new complex geography of economic systems: models, tools and policy evaluation”. Visualizing the EU as a complex and multi-layered network, the book is organized in three parts, each of them dealing with a different level of analysis: At the macro-level, Part I considers the interactions within large economic systems (regions or countries) involving trade, workers migration, and other factor movements. At the meso-level, Part II discusses interactions within specific but wide-ranging markets, with a focus on financial markets and banking systems. Lastly, at the micro-level, Part III explores the decision-making of single firms, especially in the context of location decisions.

This open access book discusses how national citizenship is being transformed by economic, social and political change. It focuses on the emergence of global markets where citizenship is for sale and on how new reproduction technologies impact citizenship by descent. It also discusses the return of banishment through denationalisation of terrorist suspects, and the impact of digital technologies, such as blockchain, on the future of democratic citizenship. The book provides a wide range of views on these issues from legal scholars, political scientists, and political practitioners. It is structured as a series of four conversations in which authors respond to each other. This exchange of arguments provides unique depth to current debates about the future of citizenship.

Twenty years ago I worked on an advisory report on the effectiveness of various tobacco control policy measures, commissioned by the Dutch Ministry of Health1 as part of the process of presenting a revised Tobacco Act to the parliament (Willemsen, De Zwart, & Mooy, 1998). Soon after the report was finished I attended the World Conference on Tobacco or Health in Beijing, where I spoke with a civil servant from the Dutch Ministry of Health. I asked him what would happen with the report and was shocked when he told me that many of the conclusions were “not politically feasible” and could not be taken up. This was the first time that I was confronted with the concept of “political feasibility.” In hindsight, this was rather naïve of me, but students and researchers who invest time and effort in understanding better ways of helping people to overcome tobacco addiction sooner or later come to realize that the tobacco problem has political roots. To do something about it on a societal level, one has to acknowledge what many people would describe as “nasty” politics. Many scientists shy away from this, just as I did then, because they believe that science is independent and politics-free or because they are intimidated by what they perceive as complexity, unpredictability, and irrationality in politics for which they are not prepared, being used to working from within an evidence-based science paradigm. A more effective strategy to address the tobacco problem on a societal level is to try to understand the policy process and why this process at times appears so irrational. Since my professorship in tobacco control research, journalists, scientific colleagues from other countries, and students have asked me the same question: why is the Dutch government not doing more to control tobacco? This book is my attempt to formulate an answer. As an introductory text to the field, it seeks to provide an understanding of the full complexities of tobacco control policy. It further aims to offer a broad framework for thinking about tobacco control policymaking. Many of the understandings in the book can be applied to other public health areas, and lessons drawn from the analysis of the Dutch case may be of interest to other countries, particularly those with similar multi-party parliamentary democracies.

This book takes a taxpayer's perspective to the relations taxation creates between people and their state. Larsen proposes that in order to understand tax compliance and cheating, we have to look beyond law, psychological experiments and surveys to include tax collectors and taxpayers' practices. The text explores the view of taxes seen as citizen’s explicit economic relation to the state and implicit economic relation to all other compatriots. Larsen suggests how to build and increase tax compliance if we take the idea of taxation creating reciprocal relations seriously. The empirical cases are based on ethnography from two opposing tax practices in Sweden. Firstly, from a study of analysts, auditors, legal experts and managers at the Swedish Tax Agency and how they, quite successfully, strive for legitimacy in their tax collecting activities in society. Secondly, from fieldwork among a group of middle-aged Swedes and how they justify their tax-cheating when purchasing work off the books. Sweden is a modern society seen as particularly rational and the least prone to worry about survival issues; they trust their government and fellow citizens. Sweden is therefore an important country to look at as an example of tax compliance and whether other countries showing a continuous inclination towards these values will follow their lead.

The objective of this report is to examine the extent to which countries in Latin America and the Caribbean participate in global value chains and what are the drivers of such participation. Production processes have been increasingly fragmented worldwide. For example, the production of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner involves 43 suppliers located in 135 locations around the globe. There are many examples like the Dreamliner, from the 451 parts that go into the iPod to the less technologically intensive but still widespread multi-country production of a Barbie doll. All this reflects significant changes in the way world production is being reorganized across national borders. That is, for many goods, production has become a multi-country process in which different stages are carried out in specialized plants in different parts of the world. Countries which specialize in different stages of the production process are thus linked by these global value chains. For developing countries, a clear opportunity from the continuous international fragmentation of production arises in the form of participating in activities that were virtually not opened to them in the past. Therefore, the international fragmentation of production provides opportunities for trade diversification, an issue that can be of particular importance for Latin America and the Caribbean as the region’s export base is in general highly concentrated in a few industries and particularly biased towards natural-resource intensive sectors. The aim is to identify whether there is policy space for implementing strategies that allow countries to improve their position in regional and global value chains.