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”

Development and/or change of the notion of permanent object and operative causality: empirical evidence in the first year of life

This study examines the notion of permanent object during the first year of life, taking into account the controversy of two approaches about the nature of change: developmental change and cognitive change. Using a longitudinal/cross-sectional design, tasks adapted of the subscale of permanent object and operative causality of the Uzgiris-Hunt Scale (Uzgiris and Hunt, 1975) (Uzgiris & Hunt, 1975) were presented to 110 infants of 0, 3, 6 and 9 months-old, which reside in three cities of Colombia. The results showed three types of strategies: (a) Not resolution; (b) Exploratory and (c) Resolution, which follow different trajectories in children’s performance. This allows affirming that adaptive conquests of the cognitive development stay together with the variety of strategies. Using strategies reveals adjustments and transformations of action programs that consolidate the notion of permanent object not necessarily with age, but with self-regulatory processes. Empirical evidence contributes to the understanding of the relations between the emergence of novelty in the development and performance variability