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AbstractThis article addresses the relationship between history and the international. Starting from the 'history controversy' in IR in the 1980s and 1990s, it shows that that debate hinged on the political import of history as a form of knowledge. This political meaning, to which agency and freedom were central, was challenged through the theorisation in IR of the problematic relationship of the international, as a fragmented political form, to historical time: the spatial inside–outside division was understood as carrying a corresponding temporal and historical division, between progress and repetition. To explain why history carried this political significance, the article explores the connection of historical consciousness to sovereignty and political subjectivity. It shows that history as a distinctively modern form of relation to 'the past' is inseparable from the rise of modern sovereign authority and its accompanying political subject and idea of freedom: sovereignty's reformulation of political space went along with a refashioning of the character of historical time. However, history's conceptual attachment to sovereignty also ties it to the fragmented form of the international. History thus finds its limits in the international and IR becomes a site for the critique of the relationship between history, political form, and subjectivity.

Behind the recent discussions within Marxist IR theory concerning political multiplicity and uneven and combined development lies the larger, still unresolved, question of Marxism's relation to Realism. Marxism in IR has never sufficiently recognized the seriousness of the challenge that the Realist conceptions of the intrinsic nature of the political and, therefore, of the international present to any Marxist ambition of human freedom. A review of the major approaches within IR Marxism shows that the question of the political remains a theoretical blind spot. Hence, they cannot convincingly grasp geopolitics and the international without falling prey to Realist essentializing. This theoretical deficit within IR Marxism is traceable back to the ambivalence of Marx's own thinking concerning revolutionary social change. If it is to escape the Realist fate, Marxism in IR must engage with the central categories of political thought to produce a critical theory of the political. [Reprinted by permission; copyright Sage Publications Ltd. & ECPR-European Consortium for Political Research.]

Behind the recent discussions within Marxist IR theory concerning political multiplicity and uneven and combined development lies the larger, still unresolved, question of Marxism's relation to Realism. Marxism in IR has never sufficiently recognized the seriousness of the challenge that the Realist conceptions of the intrinsic nature of the political and, therefore, of the international present to any Marxist ambition of human freedom. A review of the major approaches within IR Marxism shows that the question of the political remains a theoretical blind spot. Hence, they cannot convincingly grasp geopolitics and the international without falling prey to Realist essentializing. This theoretical deficit within IR Marxism is traceable back to the ambivalence of Marx's own thinking concerning revolutionary social change. If it is to escape the Realist fate, Marxism in IR must engage with the central categories of political thought to produce a critical theory of the political.

In The Devil Finds Work (1976), James Baldwin presents a remarkably generous review of Boris Vian's controversial novel, J'irai cracher sur vos tombes (1946). Vian's book was exceptionally sensitive to the "rage and pain" of African Americans, Baldwin thought. Baldwin's words seem surprising today: Vian, a white Frenchman, published the work as a protest novel under the false identity of a fictional African American, whom he called Vernon Sullivan. The novel was a hoax, a prank. J'irai cracher sur vos tombes tends to be viewed today in North America, rightly, as an egregious instance of cultural appropriation. The present study argues, however, that the French pastiche of a Black American protest novel baited the reading public into a debate that ignored racism, colonialism, and protest. We argue to view J'irai cracher sur vos tombes and the ensuing scandal it provoked, as an historical archive that allows us to chart a certain ideological climate in France. The public reception of the novel makes abundantly clear that, on the subject of J'irai cracher, Paris wanted to talk about sex, youth morality, and the threats of American cultural hegemony—not racism. Read as an historical affaire, the scandal exposes an extended moment of collective blindness in France. When examined as an historical incident, "the J'irai cracher Affair" reads like a dramatic ironic pronouncement, as if Vian were making a joke only he and a select audience—Baldwin, for one—would understand.

WOS: 000401058500006 ; PubMed ID: 28339826 ; Background. During the follow-up in a randomized controlled trial (RCT), participants may receive additional (non-randomly allocated) treatment that affects the outcome. Typically such additional treatment is not taken into account in evaluation of the results. Two pivotal trials of the effects of hemodiafiltration (HDF) versus hemodialysis (HD) on mortality in patients with end-stage renal disease reported differing results. We set out to evaluate to what extent methods to take other treatments (i.e. renal transplantation) into account may explain the difference in findings between RCTs. This is illustrated using a clinical example of two RCTs estimating the effect of HDF versus HD on mortality. Methods. Using individual patient data from the Estudio de Supervivencia de Hemodiafiltracion On-Line (ESHOL; n = 902) and The Dutch CONvective TRAnsport STudy (CONTRAST; n = 714) trials, five methods for estimating the effect of HDF versus HD on all-cause mortality were compared: intention-totreat (ITT) analysis (i.e. not taking renal transplantation into account), per protocol exclusion (PPexcl; exclusion of patients who receive transplantation), PPcens (censoring patients at the time of transplantation), transplantation-adjusted (TA) analysis and an extension of the TA analysis (TA(ext)) with additional adjustment for variables related to both the risk of receiving a transplant and the risk of an outcome (transplantation-outcome confounders). Cox proportional hazards models were applied. Results. Unadjusted ITT analysis of all-cause mortality led to differing results between CONTRAST and ESHOL: hazard ratio (HR) 0.95 (95% CI 0.75-1.20) and HR 0.76 (95% CI 0.59-0.97), respectively; difference between 5 and 24% risk reductions. Similar differences between the two trials were observed for the other unadjusted analytical methods (PPcens, PPexcl, TA) The HRs of HDF versus HD treatment became more similar after adding transplantation as a time-varying covariate and including transplantation-outcome confounders: HR 0.89 (95% CI 0.69-1.13) in CONTRAST and HR 0.80 (95% CI 0.62-1.02) in ESHOL. Conclusions. The apparent differences in estimated treatment effects between two dialysis trials were to a large extent attributable to differences in applied methodology for taking renal transplantation into account in their final analyses. Our results exemplify the necessity of careful consideration of the treatment effect of interest when estimating the therapeutic effect in RCTs in which participants may receive additional treatments. ; EuDial working group; European Nephrology and Dialysis Institute; Catalan Society of Nephrology; Fresenius Medical Care and Gambro through the Catalan Society of Nephrology; Dutch Kidney Foundation [C02.2019]; Fresenius Medical Care, The NetherlandsNetherlands Government; Gambro Lundia, Sweden; Dr E.E. Twiss Fund, Roche Netherlands; International Society of Nephrology/Baxter Extramural Grant Program; Netherlands Organization for Health Research and Development (ZONMw)Netherlands Organization for Health Research and Development [170882802]; Health Ministry (Programme Hospitalier de Recherche Clinique) ; The HDF Pooling Project was designed, conducted and analyzed independently of the financial contributors of the individual studies as listed below. Study data were collected and retained by the investigators and were not available for the financial contributors of the individual studies. S.A.E.P. and the representatives of the combined authors of the four studies were financially supported by the EuDial working group. EuDial is an official working group of the European Renal Association-European Dialysis Transplant Association (ERA-EDTA; http://era-edta.org/eudial/European_Dialysis_Working_Group.html). No industry funding was received for any part of or activity related to the present analysis.; The Turkish HDF study was supported by the European Nephrology and Dialysis Institute with an unrestricted grant. The study was performed in Fresenius Medical Care hemodialysis clinics in Turkey. ESHOL was supported by the Catalan Society of Nephrology and by grants from Fresenius Medical Care and Gambro through the Catalan Society of Nephrology. The CONTRAST study was supported by a grant from the Dutch Kidney Foundation (Nierstichting Nederland Grant C02.2019) and unrestricted grants from Fresenius Medical Care, The Netherlands, and Gambro Lundia, Sweden. Additional support was received from the Dr E.E. Twiss Fund, Roche Netherlands, the International Society of Nephrology/Baxter Extramural Grant Program and the Netherlands Organization for Health Research and Development (ZONMw Grant 170882802). The French HDF study was supported by a national grant from the Health Ministry (Programme Hospitalier de Recherche Clinique) as a means to improve care and outcomes in elderly chronic disease patients.

Reimbursement for chronic dialysis consumes a substantial portion of healthcare costs for a relatively small proportion of the total population. Each country has a unique reimbursement system that attempts to control rising costs. Thus, comparing the reimbursement systems between countries might be helpful to find solutions to minimize costs to society without jeopardizing quality of treatment and outcomes. We conducted a survey of seven countries to compare crude reimbursement for various dialysis modalities and evaluated additional factors, such as inclusion of drugs or physician payments in the reimbursement package, adjustment in rates for specific patient subgroups, and pay for performance therapeutic thresholds. The comparison examines the United States, the province of Ontario in Canada, and five European countries (Belgium, France, Germany, The Netherlands, and the United Kingdom). Important differences between countries exist, resulting in as much as a 3.3-fold difference between highest and lowest reimbursement rates for chronic hemodialysis. Differences persist even when our data were adjusted for per capita gross domestic product. Reimbursement for peritoneal dialysis is lower in most countries except Germany and the United States. The United Kingdom is the only country that has implemented an incentive if patients use an arteriovenous fistula. Although home hemodialysis (prolonged or daily dialysis) allows greater flexibility and better patient outcomes, reimbursement is only incentivized in The Netherlands. Unfortunately, it is not yet clear that such differences save money or improve quality of care. Future research should focus on directly testing both outcomes.