Los políticos del progreso. Científicos en el gobierno y en el Partido Progresista (1833-1868)

La organización del Partido Progresista tiene una configuración abierta, que ensaya fórmulas de elecciones primarias y que con contará con dos núcleos: La minoría parlamentaria y una organización que será permanente desde 1846, en la que se distingue la Junta Central y la Comisión Directiva. Entre los políticos de la generación del progreso Francisco de Luxán será el primero de una nómina muy reducida de ministros con formación científico-técnica, y entre los dirigentes del Partido Progresista y de la Unión Liberal será también el único con formación científico-técnica.

Welfare Regimes and “progressive” governments in Latin America: The cases of Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia

Several authors have applied the concept of Welfare Regimens for studying social policy in Latin America (Esping-Andersen, 1993 and 2000). Among others, Martínez Franzoni (2007) develops a typology, with fi eld work is at the turn of the millennium, and establishes three categories: State-productivist regime, state-protectionist and family orientated. Most countries in the region are placed in the latter category. The hypothesis of this article argues that with the emergence of governments considered “left” or “progressive” in several countries of the region from the late ‘90s and, more decisively, in 2000’, the map of welfare regimes models could have mutated substantively. The nationally transformative experiences are different (various socio-economic realities and political action in which they are located exists) but they have several contact points that can be summarized in a greater state intervention in different areas previously closed to their operating and recovery of important functions of welfare and care of the population by the government. The paper discusses with an exploratory and descriptive approach the welfare schemes that would shape in three countries that have constitutionalized the change from the neoliberal paradigm: Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador.

Conditional cash transfer programs and the representations of poverty in Bolivia and Peru

Bolivia and Peru adopted the same instruments of social policy —conditional cash transfer programs— to solve the same public problems under different political regimes. By means of the qualitative methodology of discourse analysis, this paper studies the representations of poverty and State made by key actors of those social programs. Underlying more differences than similarities, one demonstrates that the same social policy is linked to opposite social representations of poverty and the State role in every country. The main explanation for this is, far from being imposed by international organizations, those programs are adopted and adapted by each political regime.