Towards a Theoretical Understating of How to Study the State: Governmentality, Power and Governmental Regimes

Artículo teórico que se origina a partir de un proyecto más amplio que investiga la construcción del Plan Nacional del Buen Vivir 2013-2017 (PNBV 2013-2017) en Ecuador. Su primordial preocupación teórica es responder a la siguiente pregunta: cómo estudiar los procesos de formación del Estado en Ecuador desde el año 2008. El documento responde a esta amplia cuestión argumentando, a nivel general, que el Estado se reproduce en parte mediante la creación de espacios donde efectivamente puede intervenir en la sociedad. Este trabajo se refiere, por lo tanto, con el examen de las formas particulares en que los Estados penetran la sociedad a través de regímenes gubernamentales. En términos más específicos, este trabajo sostiene que los procesos de intervención del Estado pueden ser ampliamente entendidos por la observación de tres procesos complementarios e interrelacionados: a. La forma en la que el Estado busca legitimar su presencia en la sociedad; b. Prácticas gubernamentales: las formas en las que el Estado aprende, organiza, distribuye y en última instancia crea campos específicos de intervención; c. El ejercicio de diferentes y complementarias modalidades de poder. En base a los citados elementos analiza la construcción de un "régimen gubernamental".

Unholy compromise in the eurozone and how to right it. CEPS Policy Brief No. 277, 16 July 2012

This paper reviews the causes of the ongoing crisis in the eurozone and the policies needed to restore stability in financial markets and reassure a bewildered public. Its main message is that the EU will not overcome the crisis until it has a comprehensive and convincing set of policies in place; able to address simultaneously budgetary discipline and the sovereign debt crisis, the banking crisis, adequate liquidity provision by the ECB and dismal growth. The text updates and expands on his Policy Brief contributed in the run-up to the emergency European Council meeting at the end of June.

How to deal with macroeconomic imbalances? CEPS Special Report No. 69, 23 November 2012

Lax financial conditions can foster credit booms. The global credit boom of the last decade led to large capital flows across the world, including large movements of resources from the northern countries of the euro area towards the southern part. Since the start of the crisis and more markedly after 2009, these flows have suddenly stopped, creating severe adjustment pressure. At this point the common monetary policy can only try to mitigate the unavoidable adjustment by maintaining overall financial stability. The challenge is to strike a delicate balance between providing liquidity for solvent institutions while keeping the overall pressure on for a rapid correction of the imbalances.

How to avoid a double-dip recession in the eurozone. CEPS Commentary, 15 November 2012

This CEPS Commentary argues that the way in which the burden of adjustment to the imbalances in the eurozone is borne almost exclusively by the deficit countries in the periphery produces a deflationary bias in the region as a whole. Against the threat of double-dip recession, Paul De Grauwe asserts that the adjustment could be done differently and calls for implementation of a more symmetric macroeconomic policy that reduces the deflationary bias.

How to withdraw from the European Union? Confronting hard reality. CEPS Commentary, 16 January 2013

As David Cameron prepares to deliver his momentous “Europe” speech, Adam Łazowski warns the British Prime Minister that a divorce from the EU will not be easy and that the decision should be based on a very thorough political, economic and legal analysis, as the consequences in all possible respects will be profound.

How to save a bad element with weak boundary conditions

The P-1-P-1 finite element pair is known to allow the existence of spurious pressure (surface elevation) modes for the shallow water equations and to be unstable for mixed formulations. We show that this behavior is strongly influenced by the strong or the weak enforcement of the impermeability boundary conditions. A numerical analysis of the Stommel model is performed for both P-1-P-1 and P-1(NC)-P-1 mixed formulations. Steady and transient test cases are considered. We observe that the P-1-P-1 element exhibits stable discrete solutions with weak boundary conditions or with fully unstructured meshes. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.