Populismos y democracias defectuosas en El Ecuador (1996-2012): continuidades y diferencia

From 1995 to 2015, Ecuador experienced one of its longest periods of deep political, social and economic crisis. During this interval, three democratically elected governments (Bucaram, 1997; Mahuad, 2000 and Gutiérrez, 2005) were overthrown and a critical juncture arose in 2006 as a result. Since 2007, and as a consequence of these chaotic circumstances, new populist strongmen ascended and, amid the biggest bonanza of oil revenues in Ecuadorian history, established a defective democracy. The gradual escalation of authoritarian tendencies during the three consecutive terms in which Rafael Correa has acted as President, have resulted in the severe weakening of the country’s democratic institutions, since Correa’s has strived to perpetuate himself in power through continual re-election into office, instead of building an institutional quality-democracy. This study aims to clarify the historical foundations of the recurrence of caudillistas, populist and authoritarian governments in Ecuador, revealing the basis of the specific path dependence of Ecuadorian politics. We also explore the Jungian theory, specifically the “pseudo-hero myth”, as the political narrative which Correa’s regime successfully employed to establish its hegemony. Additionally, we perform a psychological-political case analysis by examining the social psychology components underlying the Ecuadorian path dependence towards authoritarian and populist caudillos: Specifically, our case study is framed within historical institutionalism, which focuses on methodological individualism to attend various political science and psychological-political theories...

First detection of the Sunyaev Zel'dovich effect increment at λ < 650 μm

The Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SZ) effect is a spectral distortion of the cosmic microwave background as observed through the hot plasma in galaxy clusters. This distortion is a decrement in the CMB intensity for λ > 1.3 mm, an increment at shorter wavelengths, and small again by λ ~ 250 μm. As part of the Herschel Lensing Survey (HLS) we have mapped 1E0657–56 (the Bullet cluster) with SPIRE with bands centered at 250, 350 and 500 μm and have detected the SZ effect at the two longest wavelengths. The measured SZ effect increment central intensities are ΔI_0 = 0.097 ± 0.019 MJy sr^-1 at 350 μm and ΔI_0 = 0.268 ± 0.031 MJy sr^-1 at 500 μm, consistent with the SZ effect spectrum derived from previous measurements at 2 mm. No other diffuse emission is detected. The presence of the finite temperature SZ effect correction is preferred by the SPIRE data at a significance of 2.1σ, opening the possibility that the relativistic SZ effect correction can be constrained by SPIRE in a sample of clusters. The results presented here have important ramifications for both sub-mm measurements of galaxy clusters and blank field surveys with SPIRE.

Homogenization of the p-Laplacian with nonlinear boundary condition on critical size particles: Identifying the strange term for the some non smooth and multivalued operators

We extend previous papers in the literature concerning the homogenization of Robin type boundary conditions for quasilinear equations, in the case of microscopic obstacles of critical size: here we consider nonlinear boundary conditions involving some maximal monotone graphs which may correspond to discontinuous or non-Lipschitz functions arising in some catalysis problems.