This chapter presents the institutional preconditions and crisis situation at the EU level and in four types of member states – frontline, transit, open destination, and closed destination states. We show the configuration of interests among these states based on these preconditions and the likely outcomes that derive from them. Given the cumulation of both problem and political pressures in the open destination and transit states, these states are destined to become the major protagonists not only in the national responses to the pressure but also in the search for a joint EU policy response to the crisis. For these states, stopping the inflow of refugees and sharing the burden of accommodating the refugees who have already arrived was a priority. They shared this interest with the frontline states. But the interests of the frontline and destination states differed with regard to the reform of the CEAS: Together with the other member states, open destination states were in favor of restoring the Dublin regulation, while the frontline states wanted to reform the CEAS in such a way that they would no longer have to assume the entire responsibility for accommodating the flood of new arrivals.

This chapter analyses the practice of regulatory oversight of charitable trusts. It first analyses the powers and responsibilities assigned to each of the regulators and the relationship between them in law. This analysis shows that the vagueness of the law creates scope for regulators to consider extra-legal factors when engaging with the law. Next, the chapter examines the regulatory practice in light of China’s particular political, social, and economic conditions. The findings from semi-structural qualitative interviews point towards three factors that are especially influential in the decision-making of regulatory officials: the regional development agenda, the tension between regulatory capacity and regulatory objectives, and the regulators’ perceptions of risk. The chapter provides an in-depth analysis of each factor and highlights the regional differences in regulatory practice caused by these factors.

In Chapter 7, we empirically test the propositions and hypotheses developed in Ch. 4. Specifically, we examine whether natural disasters, compared to other industrial disasters and terrorist attacks, affect multinational corporations (MNCs) foreign subsidiary investment. We also analyze if this effect varies in response to different sub-types of natural disasters. Then, we test if stronger institutional environments moderate the relationship between disasters and foreign subsidiary-level investment. We test our hypotheses using a panel dataset that includes 31,285 observations from 71 European Fortune Global 500 MNCs and their subsidiaries operating across 101 countries during the period 2001–2006. Our findings indicate that MNC foreign subsidiary investment is likely to decrease in response to severe terrorist attacks or technological disasters but not natural disasters, except for the case of windstorms and related water surges, the deadliest weather-related natural disasters. For natural disasters, the likelihood of MNC subsidiary-level disinvestment increased with higher host country democratic freedoms and decreased with higher host country’s regulatory enforcement quality.