Entre la pampa del lenguaje y el alambrado de la escritura: la mancha roja como síntoma de la ambigüedad de lo real en La ocasión de Juan José Saer

La presencia recurrente del color rojo en La ocasión de Saer desempeña una función desestabilizadora en relación a la representación figurativa. En el artículo se establecen analogías entre esta función y el elemento voluble, no mimético de la pintura que el pensador e historiador de arte, Georges Didi-Huberman, denomina como “pan” en contraste con el detalle, categoría asociada con el carácter icónico de la pintura. Al igual que el “pan”, las manchas rojas en la novela apuntan a la dimensión de lo real que se resiste a la legibilidad y señala los límites de la narrativa realista. Saer se vale de contrastes cromáticos para aludir a tensiones políticas y epistemólogicas y a las paradojas de escribir una novela situada en el siglo diecinueve pero incorporando la experiencia literaria del siglo veinte.     

Administrative Innovations and Accountability Failures: The Termination of the Spanish Telecommunications Agency

We discuss how far accountability practices may be relevant to the success of independent regulators in countries without a tradition of administrative autonomy. We develop a conceptualisation of agency accountability failures and develop an analytical framework to examine the life and termination of the Spanish regulatory agency for telecommunications, CMT (Comisión del Mercado de las Telecomunicaciones - Telecommunications Market Commission). We argue that the CMT’s termination was related, among other reasons, to accountability failures in its institutional design. The paper relies on a variety of sources, including legislation, literature, media coverage, and semistructured interviews with agency officials and several stakeholders.     

Ritual Demonstrations versus Reactive Protests: Participation Across Mobilizing Contexts in Mexico City

Using an innovative survey of protest participants and nonparticipants from five major street demonstrations in Mexico City in 2011 and 2012, this study tests the assumption that influences on protest participation vary across different types of events; namely, ritual demonstrations and reactive protests. The comparison is based on two assumptions: that these are two of the dominant forms of protest in contemporary Latin America, and that specifying the context for different types of social movement participation provides a better understanding of the individual mobilization process for groups seeking to defend their rights or gain new benefits. The comparative analyses reveal some crucial differences. Political interest and previous political experience are more influential in the decision to take part in reactive demonstrations. For ritual demonstrations, the decision to participate tends to be driven more by personal and organizational connections.     

Spotlight on research integrity: international insights on strengthening research culture in the forensic sciences and beyond

The Singapore Statement on Research Integrity, articulated during the 2nd World Conference on Research Integrity in 2010, encompasses principles that apply to all research endeavours, including the various disciplines that comprise the field of forensic science Singapore Statement on Research Integrity (2010) (https://wcrif.org/guidance/singapore-statement). Cases of research misconduct and breaches of research integrity in any field undermine the trustworthiness of research and make it difficult if not impossible for others to rely upon and replicate research results. Moreover, problems in the research environment, whether in the academic, public, or private sector, can include bullying and harassment, discrimination, abuse of power and corruption, as well as competitive pressures related to employment and status.     

Behavioural Response to a Sudden Health Risk: Dengue and Educational Outcomes in Colombia

Epidemics tend to have a debilitating influence on the lives of directly afflicted families. However, the presence of an epidemic can also change the behaviour and outcomes of those not directly affected. This paper makes use of a short, sharp, unexpected epidemic to examine the behavioural response of the public to a sudden shift in the perceived risk to one’s health and mortality. Our analysis finds that unafflicted school students change their behaviour substantially, affecting important life outcomes. In particular, we find that between 1.9 and 4.7 fewer students, out of a typical cohort of 47 pupils, sit their school leaving examination for every additional 10 cases of severe Dengue per 10 000 inhabitants in a municipality. We rule out several possible mechanisms, leaving an increase in the salience of the disease’s risks as a plausible explanation for our findings.     

Der Europ?ische Gerichtshof als Motor der Integration: Eine akteursbezogene Erkl?rung

For nearly five decades, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has developed a decisively pro-European case law and has become the ??engine of integration??. Institutional explanations shed light on the Court??s room for manoevre. They have to be complemented by actor-centered explanations that shed light on the judges?? motives of action. The explanation offered by the following paper is unfolded in two steps. In the first one, the article describes idiosyncrasies of the European law discourse that already shaped the judges before they were appointed. The analysis of the idiosyncrasies corresponds to a scepticism towards the idea of national sovereignty, a belief in the necessity of creative and idealist, law-augmenting judges and a dominance of output-oriented legitimization strategies. In a second step, the article shows that in the sociological sense the ECJ judges constitute a group. While the individual judges share an understanding of the aims and functions of European law, the group develops its own identity and grants status to those who perform successful actions with respect to the common integration agenda. This explanation is more realistic than ??rational choice?? explanations which point to the direct and personal benefits that judges derive from their pro-European case law.     

Broader Energy Cooperation with Latin America

THE energy policy set out in China’s 12th Five-year Plan (2011-2015) is widely expected to swing the door open to cooperation with resource-rich Latin American