Tom Stoppard himself might have had trouble shaping it into a dramatically coherent structure, and Mr. Nelson doesn't succeed in stitching "Nikolai and the Others" together very tightly.

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"Until we have some sort of coherent, plausible structure in place, we're going to have these fits and starts, " Mr. Shea said.

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Regional assemblies might make the new constitutional structure look more coherent.

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The euro was created without the supporting structure of a treasury, tax-raising powers and coherent decision-making.

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Yet the best managers are not likely to opt for working in the health service until a coherent training can be created with better incentives and a proper career structure with an educational component.

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In principle, the tri-partite structure of three working groups encompassing basic science, adaptation and economics should produce a relatively coherent whole - more so, and with a more impressive imprimatur, than if each were assessed on its own, perhaps against the backdrop of turf wars.

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