Crisis of political representation and democratization in Mexico: the generality and specificity of the case

This article attempts to assess the implications and the own character of the crisis of representation in Mexico. Once the topic framed and the long-term dynamics of Mexican political elites presented, this paper will attempt to understand why, despite the pluralization of the party system, there remain many questions about the truly democratic nature of the Mexican political system.

Conflict, wages, and multiple equilibria

Firms’ compensation practices affect the protection of investors’ interests and the degree of economic inequality by changing the stakes of engaging in appropriation activities versus respecting the status quo. We use a general equilibrium model where workers can either work peacefully or join a guerrilla movement that expropriates entrepreneurs. If workers are peaceful, they receive a competitive wage. If they join a guerrilla movement, they receive a share of the appropriated wealth, which depends positively on the number of guerrilla members. In this framework, we find one low-income, low-wage equilibrium with guerrilla activity and one peaceful, high-income, high-wage equilibrium. The peaceful equilibrium can be reached through redistribution policies, which can be implemented at the firm level. In essence, through their compensation policies entrepreneurs, not the state might be able to protect their assets against expropriation and simultaneously control the internal principal-agent problem.

The political influence of the kurdish community in Syria and its possible transboundary Effects in the subregion of the Middle East, during the period 2011-2014

El interés de esta monografía es analizar las interacciones no-lineales con resultados emergentes que mantuvo la comunidad kurda en Siria, durante el periodo 2011-2014, y por las cuales se produjeron formas de auto-organización como resultado de la estructura compleja a la que pertenece. De esta forma, se explica cómo a raíz de la crisis política siria y los enfrentamientos con el Estado Islámico, se transformó el rol de los kurdos en Siria y se influenciaron las estructuras políticas del país y las naciones de la región con población kurda. Por lo tanto, esta investigación se propone analizar este fenómeno a través del enfoque de complejidad en Relaciones Internacionales y el concepto de Auto-Organización. A partir de ello, se indaga sobre las interacciones surgidas en estructuras más pequeñas, que habrían afectado un sistema mayor; estableciendo nuevas formas de organización que no pueden ser explicadas, únicamente, a partir de elementos causales.

La evolución del concepto de la Seguridad Humana: argumentos a favor y en contra acerca de las intervenciones humanitarias. Ilustración en el caso del campo de refugiados de Srebrenica en 1995

Esta disertación busca analizar y contrastar los argumentos sobre una posible intervención en el campo de refugiados de Srebrenica en 1995 bajo el concepto de Seguridad Humana.

A juridical-practical framework for the investigation of crimes against granting of public housing services

The public service enterprises are victims of crimes and felonies which may reduce their capacity to perform their functions. These enterprises expend much money and effort in order to prevent those criminal behaviors. For this reason they ask from the authorities more efficient measures against crime; however, such enterprises may feel that they are not being given sufficient importance and/or remedies in dealing with such crime. The aim paper of this is not to study the problem from de substantive criminal law point of view. Rather, this paper’s goal is to study the Colombia’s Rules of Criminal Procedure, which regulate the investigation of this kind of crime. The article will look particularly at the competency of the relevant authorities at the investigative stages. Finally, it will make some recommendations regarding a proper route towards the investigation of these criminal behaviors.

Paradoxes of resilience: lessons learnt from a comparison between Columbia and France

This paper investigates a discrepancy concerning resilience. International institutions such as ISDR try to promote resilience as a notion useful for preventing disasters. And some searchers, mainly coming from ecology, such as Resilience Alliance group, found the notion relevant enough to promote it as a brand for their studies on disaster prevention. Yet, the second part of the paper will verify how other searchers are still not convinced by the relevance of the notion. Territorial managers are reluctant as well, in line with the poor number of policies trying to bring resilience to reality, be it in Columbia or in France. How can we make sense of this discrepancy? The paper will stress on various political, institutional and cultural conditionings hidden behind the notion. It will also enlighten the contradictions embedded within the notion, because resilience, as disaster, depends on the scales and the actors the analysis relies on first. Which resilience to whom and at what scale? These are critical questions that should be addressed in order to give sense to these contradictions. Resilience has no absolute meaning. However, it helps identifying trends towards future disasters. This is one of the main reasons why it may be found useful.

Democracy in Uruguay: recent history and challenges

This article presents a synthetic view about the most important transformations that Uruguayan society has undergone in the last decade. It aims at articulating, through Political History and Political Science approaches, the recent political process with the itineraries of the economy and the society. It pretends in particular to argue that Uruguayan democracy is mutating, its actors and institutions are changing, with the help of both global and local transformations. K

Don't make war, make elections : Franchise extension and violence in XIXth-century Colombia

This paper studies the effect of strengthening democracy, as captured by an increase in voting rights, on the incidence of violent civil conflict in nineteenth-century Colombia. Empirically studying the relationship between democracy and conflict is challenging, not only because of conceptual problems in defining and measuring democracy, but also because political institutions and violence are jointly determined. We take advantage of an experiment of history to examine the impact of one simple, measurable dimension of democracy (the size of the franchise) on con- flict, while at the same time attempting to overcome the identification problem. In 1853, Colombia established universal male suffrage. Using a simple difference-indifferences specification at the municipal level, we find that municipalities where more voters were enfranchised relative to their population experienced fewer violent political battles while the reform was in effect. The results are robust to including a number of additional controls. Moreover, we investigate the potential mechanisms driving the results. In particular, we look at which components of the proportion of new voters in 1853 explain the results, and we examine if results are stronger in places with more political competition and state capacity. We interpret our findings as suggesting that violence in nineteenth-century Colombia was a technology for political elites to compete for the rents from power, and that democracy constituted an alternative way to compete which substituted violence.

Forms of participatory democracy: an analytical framework based on the experiences of Bolivia, brazil and Colombia

Based on the experiences of Colombia, Brazil and Bolivia, the paper proposes a general analytical framework for participatory mechanisms. The analysis is oriented to detect the incentives in each system and theethics and behavior sustaining them. It investigates about the sustainability of participatory democracy, in the face of tensions with representative democracy. The article presents a theoretical framework built from theseexperiences of institutional design and political practice, and confronts it against the theoretical conceptualizationsof participatory democracy in Bobbio, Sartori, Elster and Nino, among others. In this context, different waysin which those schemes can be inserted in the political systems become apparent, along with the variables thatresult from combining elements of direct, representative and participatory democracy”

Revisiting the Relationship between Income Distribution and Economic Growth

La mayoría de los modelos que exploran la relación entre la desigualdad en la distribución del ingreso y el crecimiento económico, postulan la existencia de una correlación negativa entre las dos que es generada a través de diferentes mecanismos. Paralelamente a los modelos teóricos, un número importante de estudios empíricos han tratado de evaluar esta relación. De este esfuerzo ha surgido un consenso amplio que valida la existencia de dicha relación negativa. No obstante, estudios recientes basados en el uso de datos de panel han producido el resultado contrario, documentando la presencia de una relación positiva entre desigualdad y crecimiento. El examen del debate generado a partir de estos resultados, así como el trabajo empírico adelantado en este estudio, indican que las estimaciones obtenidas en diversos trabajos pueden no ser tan robustas como se creía En consecuencia, se sugiere que la realización de estudios de caso por país puede ser una mejor vía para explorar este tema.

Leadership and performance in multicultural business environments a qualitative study in German-Colombian teams

Multicultural leadership is a topic a great interest in nowadays globalized work environment. Colombia emerges as an attractive marketplace with appealing business opportunities, especially for German enterprises. After presenting Colombia’s current political, social and economic situation, the thesis elaborates the complex subject of cultural differences while focusing on the peculiarities of German and Colombian national cultures. The resulting implications for a team’s collaboration and leader effectiveness are theoretically supported with reference to the landmark studies of Hofstede and GLOBE. By utilizing semi-structured interview techniques, a qualitative research enriches the previous findings and gives an all-encompassing insight in German-Colombian teamwork. The investigation identifies distinctive behavioral patterns and relations, which imply challenges and factors of success for multicultural team leaders. Finally, a categorical analysis examines the influence of cultural traits on team performance and evaluates the effectiveness of the applied leadership style.

Tres experiencias para pensar la educación en derechos humanos en Colombia

A lo largo de esta investigación se analizaron comparativamente tres experiencias auto-definidas como de Educación en Derechos Humanos, a saber, una organización no gubernamental, la Escuela de Derechos Humanos de Cinep; un colegio oficial de la ciudad de Bogotá, la IED Eduardo Umaña Mendoza; y un movimiento social, el Movimiento Nacional de Víctimas de Crímenes de Estado-Capítulo Bogotá. En lo fundamental, se analizaron los procesos de constitución de cada escenario, los discursos, y las prácticas políticas y pedagógicas a la luz de un enfoque antropológico de la Educación en Derechos Humanos. Lo que he denominado el enfoque o mirada antropológica de esta noción, implica, por una parte, una aproximación etnográfica alrededor de los discursos, las prácticas y los sentidos que los protagonistas movilizan en cada escenario con respecto a lo educativo, a los Derechos Humanos y a los sentidos de la Educación en Derechos Humanos, y por otra, la distinción entre la diversidad de redes de significado que precedieron su proceso de institucionalización, a lo cual denominaré campo simbólico, y su cohesión como un campo de saber dotado de claves analíticas propias. Campo simbólico y campo de saber operan como dos momentos analíticos diferenciables. A través del primero, se hacen evidentes las representaciones políticas, sociales y culturales heredadas del “mundo bipolar” y de la guerra fría que en términos generales exponen una defensa a ultranza de los valores y principios de la democracia liberal y de la lucha anti-comunista. Por otra parte, la noción de campo de saber permite 6 esbozar las trayectorias que le han permitido a la Educación en Derechos Humanos recrear nociones como la de sujeto de derechos o pedagogías de la memoria, claves que sin lugar a dudas cohesionan un cuerpo de saber ciertamente autónomo, dotado de fronteras porosas y móviles. La distinción entre una y otra esfera de análisis permite trazar cuando menos tres rutas de emergencia e institucionalización de la Educación en Derechos Humanos que, como se expondrá en el análisis de las experiencias, no trascurren paralelamente sino en medio de superposiciones, intersticios y desplazamientos. Así, se hacen plausibles las huellas del colonialismo, permanentemente ligadas a voces disonantes que eventualmente arrojan pistas en torno a una Educación en Derechos Humanos capaz de impugnar su propia institucionalización.

Congress composition and electoral advantage

In 2003, an electoral reform changed the mechanism to assign seats in the Colombian Congress. I simulate the 2006 Senate elections using the previous assignment mechanism to determine which senators benefited from the reform, i.e. would have not been elected had the reform not been made. With the results of the simulation, I use a regression discontinuity design to compare the senators that would have been barely elected anyways with those who would have lost, but were near to be elected. I check the differences in the amount of law drafts presented, the attendance to voting sessions, and a discipline index for each senator as proxy of their legislative behavior. I find that the senators benefiting from the reform present a different legislative behavior during the 4-year term with respect to the senators that would have been elected anyways. Since the differential legislative behavior cannot be interpreted as being better (worse) politician, I examine if the behavioral difference gives them an electoral advantage. I find no difference in the electoral result of 2010 Senate election in terms of the probability of being (re)elected in 2010, the share of votes, the share of votes within their party list, and the concentration of their votes. Additionally, I check the probability of being investigated for links with paramilitary groups and I find no differences. The results suggest that political reforms can change the composition of governing or legislative bodies in terms of performance, but it does not necessarily translate into an electoral advantage.

Natural resource windfalls and efficiency of local government expenditures: evidence from Peru

We study the role of natural resource windfalls in explaining the efficiency of public expenditures. Using a rich dataset of expenditures and public good provision for 1,836 municipalities in Peru for period 2001-2010, we estimate a non-monotonic relationship between the efficiency of public good provision and the level of natural resource transfers. Local governments that were extremely favored by the boom of mineral prices were more efficient in using fiscal windfalls whereas those benefited with modest transfers were more inefficient. These results can be explained by the increase in political competition associated with the boom. However, the fact that increases in efficiency were related to reductions in public good provision casts doubts about the beneficial effects of political competition in promoting efficiency.