  Models of hadron structure are associated with a hadronic scale which allows
by perturbative evolution to calculate observables in the deep inelastic
region. The resolution of Dyson-Schwinger equations leads to the freezing of
the QCD running coupling (effective charge) in the infrared, which is best
understood as a dynamical generation of a gluon mass function, giving rise to a
momentum dependence which is free from infrared divergences. We use this new
development to understand why perturbative treatments are working reasonably
well despite the smallness of the hadronic scale.
