Economic and historic literature is divided on the impact of the war reparations France had to pay to Germany after 1871. In view of the crisis that hit the German economy and stock markets just a few years later some claim that the reparations were a "poisoned" gift that Germany should not have...

The paper assesses the general trend towards privatisation, in the developed as well as the developing world, where even “high politics” is increasingly performed by, or outsourced to, non-state actors. This is both the case for foreign and security politics, including war, where the use by...