Lessons of peace in Aceh: administrative decentralization and political freedom as a strategy of pacification in Aceh

This working paper shows the evolution of the Aceh conflict until its peaceful resolution in 2005. The key factors in the success of this peace process have been the confluence of several factors related to the internal and external dynamics of the country, including the new political leadership, the decreasing role of the military power, the international support and the meeting of the objectives of both groups, and so on. The end of the conflict in Aceh shows that the administrative decentralization and the promotion of the political participation of the main actors involved have made possible the development of a solid alternative to the arms strategy of conflict resolution used for years in Indonesia.

Coordinació docent concreta i grups pilot EEES com a instruments per la millora de la qualitat docent i com a estratègia per la migració a l'EEES a Facultat de Dret

El projecte s'ha dut a terme a la Facultat de Dret de la Universitat de Barcelona durant el curs 2006-2007 (setembre a juliol). La finalitat principal del projecte ha estat impulsar la coordinació entre docents d'un mateix grup i iniciar la transició cap a l'Espai Europeu d’Ensenyament Superior. En aquest context, les accions desenvolupades han estat la creació de 6 grups pilot (tres a primer, dos a segon i un a tercer) adaptats a l'EEES i la formació d'equips docents dels professors implicats en aquests grups. Des de la Facultat de Dret, es van determinar les característiques i els criteris metodològics que definirien aquests grups i que els docents implicats havien de seguir. Per altra banda, els professors que formaven part d’un mateix grup es constituïen com a equip docent amb la funció de coordinar-se pel bon desenvolupament del grup. Cada equip docent comptava amb la figura del coordinador que era un docent del grup escollit pel conjunt de professors i que tenia com a funcions la de convocar les reunions, redactar les actes amb els acords establerts i fer d’enllaç entre els alumnes i els docents d’un mateix grup. El desenvolupament del projecte s’ha efectuat en tres fases: planificació i definició dels grups pilot i equips docents, l’execució del curs en els criteris metodològics establerts i la de valoració de l’experiència.

A Political Agency Model of Coattail Voting

In this paper, I provide a formal justi…cation for a well-established coattail effect, when a popular candidate at one branch of government attracts votes to candidates from the same political party for other branches of government. A political agency frame- work with moral hazard is applied to analyze coattails in simultaneous presidential and congressional elections. I show that coattail voting is a natural outcome of the optimal reelection scheme adopted by a representative voter to motivate politicians' efforts in a retrospective voting environment. I assume that an office-motivated politician (executive or congressman) prefers her counterpart to be affiliated with the same political party. This correlation of incentives leads the voter to adopt a joint performance evaluation rule, which is conditioned on the politicians belonging to the same party or different parties. The two-sided coattail effects then arise. On the one hand, the executive's suc- cess/failure props up/drags down her partisan ally in congressional election, which implies presidential coattails. On the other hand, the executive's reelection itself is affected by the congressman's performance, which results in reverse coattails. JEL classi…fication: D72, D86. Keywords: Coattail voting; Presidential coattails; Reverse coattails; Simultaneous elections; Political Agency; Retrospective voting.

The Political cost of reforms

This paper formalizes in a fully-rational model the popular idea that politicians perceive an electoral cost in adopting costly reforms with future benefits and reconciles it with the evidence that reformist governments are not punished by voters. To do so, it proposes a model of elections where political ability is ex-ante unknown and investment in reforms is unobservable. On the one hand, elections improve accountability and allow to keep well-performing incumbents. On the other, politicians make too little reforms in an attempt to signal high ability and increase their reappointment probability. Although in a rational expectation equilibrium voters cannot be fooled and hence reelection does not depend on reforms, the strategy of underinvesting in reforms is nonetheless sustained by out-of-equilibrium beliefs. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, uncertainty makes reforms more politically viable and may, under some conditions, increase social welfare. The model is then used to study how political rewards can be set so as to maximize social welfare and the desirability of imposing a one-term limit to governments. The predictions of this theory are consistent with a number of empirical regularities on the determinants of reforms and reelection. They are also consistent with a new stylized fact documented in this paper: economic uncertainty is associated to more reforms in a panel of 20 OECD countries.

Political Competition in Hard Times

This paper analyzes a spatial model of political competition between two policy- motivated parties in hard times of crisis. Hard times are modeled in terms of policy- making costs carried by a newly elected party. The results predict policy divergence in equilibrium. If the ideological preferences of parties are quite diverse and extreme, there is a unique equilibrium in which the parties announce symmetric platforms and each party wins with probability one half. If one party is extreme while the other is more moderate, there is a unique equilibrium in which the parties announce asymmetric platforms. If the preferred policies of the parties are not very distinct, there are two equilibria with asymmetric platforms. An important property of equilibrium with asymmetric platforms is that a winning party necessarily announces its most preferred policy as a platform. JEL classification: D72. Keywords: Spatial model; Political competition; Two-party system; Policy-motivated parties; Hard times; Crisis.

Emulador del Microcontrolador : Texas Instruments MSP430

Implementació d'un emulador del microcontrolador MSP430 de Texas Instruments. S'implementa l'emulació no només de la CPU, sinó també d'una part dels mòduls i els perifèrics integrats en el microcontrolador.

Perspectivas para la sostenibilidad y la preservación de los repositorios institucionales

La comunicació científica té en els dipòsits institucionals una de les seves instruments fonamentals. En els últims anys estem observant un ràpid creixement en el nombre de dipòsits i també en el volum dels seus continguts. A la vegada es constata que els esforços s'estan concentrant en incrementar la seva presència i en afavorir el dipòsit de noves obres per part dels seus autors. Pel contrari, es troben a faltar polítiques i accions que prevegin i assegurin la sostenibilitat i la preservació futura dels dipòsits. La comunicació analitzarà la realitat actual, a nivell espanyol i internacional, de les accions a favor de la preservació dels dipòsits institucionals, entre elles: els programaris utilitzats i l'existència de polítiques explícites. Finalment es desenvoluparan els elements mínims que hauria de contenir un pla d'acció per assegurar la sostenibilitat i la preservació futura de qualsevol arxiu.

Violence and Political Institutions in the Basque Country

A credible analysis or proposal to solve the problem of the treatment of violence in divided societies has to based in a good understanding of the micro-foundations of the political mobilization in these societies. Much of the engineering models seem to have been based on rather strong simplifications of the electoral behaviour of the citizens. This paper aims to contribute to the understanding of the underlying political competition in divided societies with a neo-downsian model of party competition that is based on the interpretation of Tsebelis (1991) of the consociationalism.

Tot el poder als joves! : els consells de joves com a instruments de participació ciutadana en temps de crisi globalitzada i d'exclusió social de la joventut

En una època de transformacions vertiginoses que han situat les generacions joves en una situació d'exclusió social, política, econòmica i simbòlica, les polítiques de joventut han d'esdevenir un revulsiu per a l'aprenentatge i la normalització de la ciutadania activa, dins un ampli programa de reforma social orientat a la recuperació de l'Estat del benestar i de la iniciativa política per part d'unes institucions refundades sobre nocions de democràcia participativa. En aquest context, el moviment associatiu juvenil és una expressió genuïna d'apoderament, participació autònoma i capacitat d'anàlisi que pot tenir un paper protagonista, amb l'extensió del model de consells de joves arreu del territori com a espais de deliberació, decisió i participació democràtica

New stakeholders, spaces and instruments of analysis in the context of energy relationships: Case studies from Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan

The disintegration of the USSR brought the emergence of a new geo-energy space in Central Asia. This space arose in the context of a global energy transition, which began in the late 1970s. Therefore, this new space in a changing energy world requires both new conceptual frameworks of analysis and the creation of new analytical tools. Taking into account this fact, our paper attempts to apply the theoretical framework of the Global Commodity Chain (GCC) to the case of natural resources in Central Asia. The aim of the paper is to check if there could be any Central Asia’s geo-energy space, assuming that this space would exist if natural resources were managed with regional criteria. The paper is divided into four sections. First an introduction that describes the new global energy context within natural resources of Central Asia would be integrated. Secondly, the paper justifies why the GCC methodology is suitable for the study of the value chains of energy products. Thirdly, we build up three cases studies (oil and uranium from Kazakhstan and gas from Turkmenistan) which reveal a high degree of uncertainty over the direction these chains will take. Finally, we present the conclusions of this study that state that the most plausible scenario would be the integration of energy resources of these countries in GCC where the core of the decision-making process will be far away from the region of Central Asia. Key words: Energy transition, geo-energy space, Global Commodity Chains, Central Asia

Do Fiscal and Political Decentralization Raise Students’ Performance? A Cross-Country Analysis

The low quality of education is a persistent problem in many developed countries. Parallel to in the last decades exists a tendency towards decentralization in many developed and developing countries. Using micro data from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) referred to 22 countries, we test whether there exists an impact of fiscal and political decentralization on student performance in the areas of mathematics, reading skills and science. We observe that fiscal decentralization exerts an unequivocal positive effect on students’ outcomes in all areas, while the effect of political decentralization is more ambiguous. On the one hand, the capacity of the subnational governments to rule on its region has a positive effect on students’ performance in mathematics. On the other hand, the capacity to influence the country as a whole has a negative impact on mathematics achievement. As a general result, we observe that students’ performance in Mathematics is more sensible to these exogenous variations than in Sciences and reading skills. Keywords: School outcomes, PISA, fiscal decentralization, political decentralization JEL codes: H11, H77, I21

An Inquiry into the use of illegal electoral practices and effects of political violence

This article investigates whether vote-buying and the instigation of violence in the disputed 2007 Kenyan elections were strategically motivated, and whether those affected by electoral violence changed their views towards ethno-politics and the use of violence. To answer these questions, a panel survey conducted before and after the elections is combined with external indicators of electoral violence. We find that political parties targeted vote-buying towards specific groups to weaken the support of their political rivals and to mobilize their own supporters. Furthermore, parties instigated violence strategically in areas where they were less likely to win. Although the victims of violence would prefer that parties are no longer allowed to organize in ethnic or religious lines, they are more likely to identify in ethnic terms, support the use of violence and avoid relying on the police to resolve disputes. The overall findings suggest an increased risk of electoral-violence reoccurring.

Uncertainty, electoral Incentives and political myopia

In this paper, we study the determinants of political myopia in a rational model of electoral accountability where the key elements are informational frictions and uncertainty. We build a framework where political ability is ex-ante unknown and policy choices are not perfectly observable. On the one hand, elections improve accountability and allow to keep well-performing incumbents. On the other, politicians invest too little in costly policies with future returns in an attempt to signal high ability and increase their reelection probability. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, uncertainty reduces political myopia and may, under some conditions, increase social welfare. We use the model to study how political rewards can be set so as to maximise social welfare and the desirability of imposing a one-term limit to governments. The predictions of our theory are consistent with a number of stylised facts and with a new empirical observation documented in this paper: aggregate uncertainty, measured by economic volatility, is associated to better ...scal discipline in a panel of 20 OECD countries.

An Instrumental analysis of the European Union´s capability to act in conflict response

Since its origins, the European Union has striven to be an actor on the International scene and a place in conflict Management. Yet the EU’s lack of activity cannot be justified by a mere lack of capacities. The EU counts with numerous political, economic, and, since 2003, civil and military instruments that should allow it to precede a comprehensive conflict response. This publication consists of a description of these instruments and an analysis of the final use that the Union makes of them in the different stages of a conflict. Examples will show us the EU’s main weakness in providing a comprehensive and timely response when a conflict breaks out.