Valence,Elections, and Legislative Institutions

To the degree that voters care about competence, expertise, and other valence characteristics of their representatives and political parties care about winning elections, parties have an incentive to signal that their legislators have such characteristics. We construct a model of parties, motivated by both reelection and by policy, that attempt to signal individual incumbents' valences to voters through the assignment of these members to positions of authority. The model illustrates how electorally motivated party leaders will have an incentive to promote less competent incumbents than they would if voters did not make inferences from promotion decisions. We derive the model's empirical implications and test them with original data on the careers of Chilean senators serving between 1998 and 2013. In support of the model's insights, we find that promotion to a leadership position is an effective signal to voters only if the promoted incumbent has extreme views relative to the party.     

The hazard rate of political regimes

We present a preliminary study on the stability of political regimes. In a longitudinal data set we study the effect of some observable economic and political conditions on the hazard rate of different types of political regimes. We find that economic development has a stabilizing effect in countries with democratic political institutions, but rich autocracies do not show a lower hazard rate than less developed autocracies. While the stability of autocracies is not affected by their degree of economic development, it is greatly associated with the degree of popular discontent. Widespread discontent with leaders in autocratic regimes highly increases their hazard rate. This relationship is much weaker for regimes with democratic institutions. We also find a non-monotonic time dependence pattern for the hazard rate of political regimes. Political regimes are found to be at an increasing risk of collapse during the first years, with their hazard rates reaching a peak around the fourth year.     

Study of Chilean Children’s Dental Maturation*

Abstract: In forensic science, determining a person’s chronological age has become a challenge for researchers. Determining age using dental calcification is becoming increasingly important. The objective of this study is to estimate the dental age of the children’s population in Region VIII, Chile. The sample was randomly taken from children under the care of the Faculty of Dentistry at the Universidad de Concepción in Chile. The study encompasses 159 children between 3 and 14 years of age. The dental age was determined following the Demirjian method. The Bland–Altman method was applied to establish the correlation. It was determined that the range between chronological and dental age is similar, and the degree of correlation between both ages is nearly perfect. In conclusion, the degree of correlation between the chronological and dental ages for each gender is also very good although it is slightly higher for females.     

Women in Command: The Impact of Female Leadership on International Organisations

After the unsuccessful search for a female UN General Secretary in 2016, the question about what would be the impact of more women leading international organisations (IOs) seems more relevant than ever. This study argues that female leaders of IOs are more inclined towards social policies than their male peers due to being socialised into the role of caregivers, and, therefore, provoke a change in the focus of their institutions’ agendas. First, it provides a detailed discussion of the presence of female leaders in IOs from 1875 to 2018. Then, it analyses both the policy agendas and the discourse of Sadako Ogata and Ruud Lubbers of UNHCR to emphasise the difference in terms of their policy outlook. Although the findings cannot definitely prove a causal relationship, they suggest that it is plausible that women promote more social policies than men, which could change the way international affairs are conducted if the number of female leaders keeps increasing.     

Uneven paths: women and welfare in Italy and Spain

Taking the Spanish case as a departure point, this paper explores a variety of causes for the slowdown in female employment growth in Italy over recent years. The paper analyses the peculiarities of the Italian labour market, with a higher propensity to inactivity than in other countries, as well as the generally low educational levels among the Italian population and the pervasive presence of the black economy. It goes on to examine institutional and political features, such as the organisation of social policies, the political weakness of feminism, the role of the Catholic Church, family networks and the North–South duality (which is particularly extreme with regard to gender equality). The features studied relate to each other in a logic which could account for the divergent paths of the social position of women in Italy and Spain. The article is based in Labour Force and Multiscopo surveys, as well as on interviews with Italian social policy experts.     

State of the world 2017: autocratization and exclusion?

This article presents evidence of a global trend of autocratization. The most visible feature of democracy – elections – remains strong and is even improving in some places. Autocratization mainly affects non-electoral aspects of democracy such as media freedom, freedom of expression, and the rule of law, yet these in turn threaten to undermine the meaningfulness of elections. While the majority of the world’s population lives under democratic rule, 2.5 billion people were subjected to autocratization in 2017. Last year, democratic qualities were in decline in 24 countries across the world, many of which are populous such as India and the United States. This article also presents evidence testifying that men and wealthy groups tend to have a strong hold on political power in countries where 86% of the world population reside. Further, we show that political exclusion based on socio-economic status in particular is becoming increasingly severe. For instance, the wealthy have gained significantly more power in countries home to 1.9 billion of the world’s population over the past decade.     

Injuries due to deliberate violence in Chile

An analysis was made over a period of 6 months of the incidents involving deliberate violence as registered in 'Vicaria', the clinic for out-patients within the Cathedral of Santiago de Chile. A total of 236 victims of deliberate violence were observed. Men aged 15-24 years were found to be victims of deliberate violence most frequently. 'Under education' was the most frequently registered occupation for both sexes, and a large group of male victims were 'Unemployed'. 82% of the victims were men and 14% women, 1.5% were boys and 1.5% girls less than or equal to 14 years of age. None of the victims were alcohol intoxicated when arriving in the clinic. The incidents took place in streets for 81% of the male victims and 79% of the female victims, and in the majority of the cases the aggressor(s) was one (or several) police officer(s). Six percent of the female victims had been injured at home. There was no reporting of the aggressor being a relative or acquaintance. The most frequent type of violence was blunt violence from baton(s) (44%), while blunt violence without the use of instruments was reported less frequently (33%). The use of firearms was registered in 18% of the cases, and of sharp instruments, combustion, electro-shock and chain in 1.4%, 1.4%, 1.1% and 0.4% of the cases respectively. A total of 517 primary and secondary diagnoses were applied to the patients. Most of the victims (99%) had moderate or less serious lesions according to the Abbreviated Injury Scale (AIS) (score less than or equal to 2). Twenty-four percent of the victims had more than 4 lesions, and 7% more than 10 lesions. The head/neck region and the trunk were affected with equal frequency, the frequency of injuries of the head/neck region being comparable with that observed among torture victims and in contrast to the pronounced predominance of injuries of the head/neck region observed in a Danish emergency ward study of deliberate violence.     

Functioning strategies of the research groups' leaders in the context of funding and policy instabilities☆

We explore the strategies implemented by Research Groups' Leaders while coping with unstable contexts, characterized by incoherence and lack of coordination among different policy discourses and instruments, and scarce resources. We focus on a country where these conditions are present: Colombia. In doing so, we study two cases, one in nanotechnology and another one in biomedical engineering. Interviews, focus groups and workshops allowed us to identify and validate strategies grouped in four popular sayings, proper to local idiosyncrasy, highlighting the role of home institutions and principal investigators in facing such situations with resilience and resourcefulness, and even taking advantage of them. We find that Research Groups' Leaders use strategies such as: adapting, balancing agendas and funding sources, networking, and taking advantage of the support programs available at their home institution to continue functioning. These are setting the ground for a further survey which could pretend some generalization. However, policymakers could consider these findings when defining policy instruments or for assessing their effectiveness or impacts.