La transició a la societat xarxa a Catalunya. Informe final de recerca (volum II)

Aquest estudi analitza les pràctiques diàries, els valors socials i les actituds de la població catalana en el procés de transició cap a la societat xarxa. Analitza el comportament de les persones a Internet i fora d'Internet, investigant el paper específic dels usos d'Internet a l'hora d'influenciar pràctiques i actituds. Es basa en les respostes a una enquesta de 3.005 individus, una mostra representativa de la població catalana el 2002. L'enquesta es va fer entre el febrer i el maig del 2002, i es basava en entrevistes cara a cara a partir d'un qüestionari de 179 preguntes. Es van utilitzar fonts secundàries per a situar els resultats catalans, particularment sobre els usos d'Internet, en el context global. L'anàlisi es va completar el 2007 incorporant-hi noves dades secundàries. L'estudi va cobrir pràctiques socials de treball, comunicació, sociabilitat, usos d'espai i temps, usos d'Internet, identitat cultural, pràctica política, associacionisme i formació de projectes d'autonomia. Es van construir diversos models estadístics per a proporcionar una anàlisi causal de cada una d'aquestes àrees d'estudi. El descobriment més significatiu fa referència a la relació entre els usos d'Internet i la construcció d'autonomia per part d'actors socials. Fent servir anàlisis factorial, l'estudi va definir cinc índexs d'autonomia que eren estadísticament independents: autonomia personal, autonomia professional, autonomia comunicativa, autonomia corporal i autonomia sociopolítica. Cada un d'aquests índexs d'autonomia independents estan fortament associats amb la freqüència i la intensitat de l'ús d'Internet, i les relacions observades es mantenen quan es controlen per variables sociodemogràfiques. A partir d'aquest estudi es pot afirmar que Internet és una plataforma important per a la construcció d'autonomia en la societat xarxa. En general, la societat catalana sembla que canviï de manera similar a altres societats en transició, amb l'èmfasi afegit del paper del territori i la família a l'hora d'enfortir les relacions socials, amb la contribució positiva d'Internet a un dens patró d'interacció social.

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.

Social media and political change: The case of the 2011 revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt

Throughout the past decade, social media have come on the scene of various popular revolts. Their role as tools of information and coordination of social movements, from the Iranian Green Movement in 2009 to the Arab uprisings in 2011, has been widely debated. In most cases, online activism through blogs, Facebook, Twitter or other forms of social media has allowed citizens to be part of a social networking exercise and to engage in a public sphere that would have otherwise been unreachable to them due to severe repression. In Tunisia and Egypt, social media helped protests start and expand thanks to their ability to coordinate and disseminate information quickly. The new information and communication tools were an influential factor in accelerating the revolutionary processes across the Arab world, albeit they cannot be seen as neither the spur nor the drivers of any revolution.

Political Humor as a confrontational tool against the Syrian regime: A study case: Syria, 15th March 2011 – 15th May 2012

The aim of this working paper is to analyze the inclusion of political humor into the set of actions used by opponents to the Syrian regime during the first year of a state-wide uprising in 2011. The research argues that although political humor has traditionally been seen mainly as a concealed voice against dominant elites, it can nevertheless take a confrontational stance and challenge a regime. In this paper we assess the role of political humor in challenging the legitimacy of the Syrian State through the battle for the signification of events. We will work with a theoretical framework that draws its assumptions from social movements’ studies and cultural studies. Through the assessment of the importance of discourse and the role of ideological domination to a regime we will see how the first year of the Syrian uprising included widespread acts of political humor as part of the strategy against the regime.

Anisotropic dispersion, space competition, and the slowdown of the Neolithic transition

The front speed of the Neolithic (farmer) spread in Europe decreased as it reached Northern latitudes, where the Mesolithic (huntergatherer) population density was higher. Here, we describe a reaction diffusion model with (i) an anisotropic dispersion kernel depending on the Mesolithicpopulation density gradient and (ii) a modified population growth equation. Both effects are related to the space available for the Neolithic population. The model is able to explain the slowdown of the Neolithic front as observed from archaeological data

Reaction-diffusion waves of advance in the transition to agricultural economics

In a previous paper [J.Fort and V.Méndez, Phys. Rev. Lett. 82, 867 (1999)], the possible importance of higher-order terms in a human population wave of advance has been studied. However, only a few such terms were considered. Here we develop a theory including all higher-order terms. Results are in good agreement with the experimental evidence involving the expansion of agriculture in Europe

Time-Delayed Theory of the Neolithic Transition in Europe

The classical wave-of-advance model of the neolithic transition (i.e., the shift from hunter-gatherer to agricultural economies) is based on Fisher's reaction-diffusion equation. Here we present an extension of Einstein's approach to Fickian diffusion, incorporating reaction terms. On this basis we show that second-order terms in the reaction-diffusion equation, which have been neglected up to now, are not in fact negligible but can lead to important corrections. The resulting time-delayed model agrees quite well with observations

El reto del paisaje urbano en China, del Mall Comercial al espacio público

Las categorías del espacio introvertido y extrovertido definen por excelencia la estructura espacial, que ordena el ámbito de lo privado y lo público en la ciudad. La dualidad del espacio abierto y cerrado, vinculado a la estructura espacial de la ciudad clásica China, quedaba ordenado, justificado y vinculado mediante una estructura espacial muy definida. Sin embargo en el modelo de ciudad contemporánea, aflora la cuestión de la integración de estas categorías espaciales y su articulación dentro de una estructura urbana heterogénea y fuertemente alterada. ¿Cuáles serán los factores de cambio de la transición de un espacio comunitario introvertido a un espacio cívico abierto? Este proceso es un proceso que debe discurrir a un doble nivel espacial y político. Debe discurrir en paralelo a la transición de las categorías espaciales que ordenan identitariamente el ámbito urbano y la progresiva transición socio-cultural y política de una sociedad que debe gradualmente identificar y adoptar como propias las instituciones de gobierno local y su escenario, la ciudad.

Contextual effects on political behavior

In her post-doctoral research stay, Aina Gallego has conducted several research projects with the overarching theme of identifying the effects of contexts on political behavior. She has examined the effects of institutions, the economic situation, or local contexts on outcomes such as voter turnout, vote choice, and positions on salient issues. As detailed below, this work has been published in several journal articles in leading Political Science journals such as Comparative Political Studies, Political Behavior, and Electoral Studies (see attached documents). She has a forthcoming book with Cambridge University Press, the most prestigious book press in Political Science.She has also published book chapters and has several working papers. In addition to conducting her research, Aina has received extensive training in both substantive areas and research methods. She has participated fully in the Department’s academic life by attending seminars and engaging in research projects with other members of the Department.

Y-chromosome diversity in native mexicans reveals continental transition of genetic structure in the Americas

The genetic characterization of Native Mexicans is important to understand multiethnic based features influencing the medical genetics of present Mexican populations, as well as to the reconstruct the peopling of the Americas. We describe the Y-chromosome genetic diversity of 197 Native Mexicans from 11 populations and 1,044 individuals from 44 Native American populations after combining with publicly available data. We found extensive heterogeneity among Native Mexican populations and ample segregation of Q-M242* (46%) and Q-M3 (54%) haplogroups within Mexico. The northernmost sampled populations falling outside Mesoamerica (Pima and Tarahumara) showed a clear differentiation with respect to the other populations, which is in agreement with previous results from mtDNA lineages. However, our results point toward a complex genetic makeup of Native Mexicans whose maternal and paternal lineages reveal different narratives of their population history, with sex-biased continental contributions and different admixture proportions. At a continental scale, we found that Arctic populations and the northernmost groups from North America cluster together, but we did not find a clear differentiation within Mesoamerica and the rest of the continent, which coupled with the fact that the majority of individuals from Central and South American samples are restricted to the Q-M3 branch, supports the notion that most Native Americans from Mesoamerica southwards are descendants from a single wave of migration. This observation is compatible with the idea that present day Mexico might have constituted an area of transition in the diversification of paternal lineages during the colonization of the Americas.

Leaving the labour market: event-history analysis of the female workers' transition to housework in Denmark, Germany, Great Britain and Spain

This paper is aimed at exploring the determinants of female activity from a dynamic perspective. An event-history analysis of the transition form employment to housework has been made resorting to data from the European Household Panel Survey. Four countries representing different welfare regimes and, more specifically, different family policies, have been selected for the analysis: Britain, Denmark, Germany and Spain. The results confirm the importance of individual-level factors, which is consistent with an economic approach to female labour supply. Nonetheless, there are significant cross-national differences in how these factors act over the risk of abandoning the labour market. First, the number of trnasitions is much lower among Danish working women than among British, German or Spanish ones, revealing the relative importance of universal provision of childcare services, vis-à-vis other elements of the family policy, as time or money.

Political mobilisation and models of trade unionism : Southern Europe in comparative perspective

The relationship between union membership and political mobilization has been studied under many perspectives, but quantitative cross-national analyses have been hampered by the absence of international comparable survey data until the first round of the European Social Survey (ESS-2002) was made available. Using different national samples from this survey in four moments of time (2002, 2004 and 2006), our paper provides evidence of cross-country divergence in the empirical association between political mobilisation and trade union membership. Cross-national differences in union members’ political mobilization, we argue, can be explained by the existence of models of unionism that in turn differ with respect to two decisive factors: the institutionalisation of trade union activity and the opportunities left-wing parties have available for gaining access to executive power.

Immigration and contested nation-building : explaining the political salience of immigration in multi-national societies

Multi-national societies present a complex setting for the politics of immigration, as migration’s linguistic, economic and cultural effects may coincide with existing contestation over nationhood between sub-units and the central state. Empirically, though, political actors only sometimes, and in some places, explicitly connect the politics of immigration to the stakes of multi-level politics. With reference to Canada, Belgium and the United Kingdom, this paper examines the conditions under which political leaders link immigration to ongoing debate about governance in multi-national societies. The paper argues that the distribution of policy competencies in the multi-level system is less important for shaping immigration and integration politics than is the perceived impact (positive or negative) on the sub-unit’s societal culture or its power relationship with the center. Immigration and integration are more often politicized where center and sub-unit hold divergent views on migration and its place in national identity.