Clase política y medios: explorando el fenómeno de la publicidad política encubierta en México

This work presents the results of a qualitative research that explores the phenomenon of political publicity on noncommercial television content, which has been growing since the electoral reform of 2007–2008. Since then, the acquisition of airtime for electoral advertising purposes, as well as the appearance of public officials on government advertising has been prohibited. The information was gathered through ‘in depth’ interviews, and analyzed through Strauss and Corbin grounded theory model, which allowed confirmation of the existence of covert political publicity, as well as to provide a definition of this concept and determine its causes, characteristics, and consequences. It was concluded that, despite the legal modification aiming to guarantee a more equitable political communication model and the eradication of airtime commercialization for electoral campaigning, this was not achieved due to structural conditions of the political system in Mexico and the relation between media and government, which impacts political communication, and extends beyond the electoral issue and its regulatory framework.     

Entre la racionalidad tecnocrática y la gobernabilidad La importancia del consenso político en México

Since the 1980s the technocratic elite has controlled the Mexican economy, regardless of whether the country is governed by the Partido Revolucionario Institucional or an opposition party. On top of showing an uncommitted stance in ideological or party terms, the elite has maintained a strict control of national public finances thus generating considerable political and electoral consequences in the country. Regardless of whether there exist or not different economic options, the main problem lies in that this elite has been unable to gain the society's support. The rationality that characterizes this elite does not admit communication with society nor does it take into consideration its opinion concerning the decisions they take. This has led to an extreme politicization of economic decisions of political parties. This article intends to expose the features of the Mexican technocracy, its development and survival during the transition, as well as the mediation flaws that have impeded communication between the society and governmental authorities concerning the development and implementation of economic measures.     

Participación política y violencia de género en México

This work studies the relationship of women and politics within the framework of the Mexican law on quotas, stressing gender political violence as an explanatory variable of women political underrepresentation. Besides basic information resulting from in-depth interviews and discussion groups, data from the last federal election (2012) are analyzed, and studies on women and political parties in Mexico are reviewed from a critical angle. Research outcomes reveal that the existing dynamics within the political parties –understood as organizations that reproduce traditional gender patterns—represent a crucial variable to explaining the peculiarities of the process through which women can have access to candidatures, and explain their experiences of discrimination, harassment, and violence related to campaigns and parliamentary performance. Also, it is claimed that the implementation of regulatory frameworks aimed at promoting women participation in parliaments depends on the prevailing political party culture in Mexico.     

Inmigrantes laborales y flujo en tránsito en la Frontera Sur de México: dos manifestaciones del proceso y una política migratoria

This text presents a characterization of Guatemalan labor immigration into Mexico, its historical perspective and processes of change in relation to new places of destination, crossings and labor insertions. It also sets out the most fundamental traits of migrants who cross Mexican territory when in transit from Central America, new crossing trajectories and social costs in terms of human rights, within a framework of greater social vulnerability. It analyzes the role that the Mexican state has played in relation to the establishment of a new migration policy set forth in the last two administrations (2001–2012) by the Partido Acción Nacional (National Action Party), institutional and legislative arrandos gements, progress and unresolved matters with respect to the proclamation of human and labor rights. It is concluded that even though unprecedented progress has been made in terms of immigration regulations, these policies still have serious shortcomings with regards to Central American immigration into Mexico, be it labor immigration or migrants in transit. This migration has taken on new forms and has registered qualitative and quantitative changes in crossing, in an environment of greater risk in Mexican territory.     

Analizando la violencia después del conflicto: el caso de Guatemala en un estudio sub-nacional

This article conceptualizes post-conflict violence by developing its definition, analyzing the factors which can explain it and constructing a typology of eight forms of violence. A central concern of this analysis is that there are different degrees of relation between the violence of conflicts and post-conflict violence given that some forms are fully related, while others are only partially related, and still others are completely independent of armed conflict. While general conditions of peace define post-conflict violence in a weak sense, direct legacies of war define post-conflict violence in a strong sense. The Guatemalan case study allows to identify patterns related to each form of violence at a sub-national level of analysis.     

Enfrentando las políticas de integración y de ciudadanía: migrantes latinoamericanos en la ciudad europea

Over the last two decades, and with the so-called failure of multiculturalism, an important debate has emerged around integration policy making for immigrants in Europe. While these policies should aim to strengthen the participation of immigrant groups in all spheres of society and encourage intercultural processes, in practise, immigrants are made to shoulder the whole responsibility of their integration. Given the international economic and political context, Europe has underscored its rejection of non-western immigration and its policies tend to enforce control measures as well as the establishment of strict selection criteria. As shown in the Latin-American case, the efficiency of these policies is limited and migrants are participating in host societies through the use of informal social and civic networks and transnational activities developed by migrants themselves, instead of through formal policies designed to integrate them. Immigrants are opening alternative channels of participation in response to the weakness in the government's policies. The resurgence of the concepts of citizenship and national identity as a strategy for integration and social cohesion, and the urgency that characterises these integration policies despite the fact that they are processes that require long-term views and goals, are leading to the inefficiency –if not the failure– of these legislative efforts.     

Teoría del campo literario y subalternidad. Perspectivas metodológicas para el estudio de la poesía en el espacio literario ibérico

Abstract

La teoría del campo literario ha constituido una referencia importante para el estudio de literaturas definidas por su carácter subalterno o dependiente, y ha conocido interesantes desarrollos teóricos y aplicados en campos académicos como el gallego, el belga o el quebequés. Los modelos resultantes tienen varios elementos comunes, resultado de la crítica y de los ajustes metodológicos realizados sobre el marco teórico de partida. Entre estos últimos, destacan la consideración de una lógica nacionalista; la expansión de la idea de autonomía, entendida ahora en los sentidos estético, discursivo, e histórico-nacional; la identificación de especificidades en la estructura y el funcionamiento de este tipo de campos, así como la complementariedad con otras teorías del entorno empírico-sistémico. Los objetivos del artículo son el repaso de estos modelos y de las aplicaciones correlativas, la proyección de su rentabilidad en el espacio literario ibérico y, especialmente, el avance de pautas metodológicas para el estudio de la poesía. En relación con este último aspecto son estudiados determinados asuntos vertebrales: la identificación de habitus y principios de distinción; la inestabilidad de las relaciones entre canonización, subcampo de producción restringida, consagración, y vanguardia; o el papel asumido por la poesía en el reparto de funciones y capitales.     

Los poderes fácticos mediáticos y el surgimiento del Estado híbrido en México

The process of institutional overlapping that developed in Mexico between formal traditional constitutional powers and mass electronic technologies, which gradually attained factual positions in the second half of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st, changed the nature and basic governing functions of the national State. Thus, mass media power gave rise to a novel mixing phenomenon that generated a new type of “hybrid State”. The corresponding new historical Republic with a highly political and media oriented nature modified the structure and scenario of the conventional contemporary nation state. The evolution of this historical reality has not yet come to an end, but instead continues to develop with an enormous amount of dynamism and force towards new stages of transformation of the State, public space, and society as a whole, without knowing its final outcome due to the strengthening of factual media power while the major branches of government are gradually weakening. Consequently, society needs to critically engage in an objective analysis of this strategic phenomenon, its phases of transformation and the viable alternatives for recovering the national development path.     

Medios electrónicos de comunicación,poderes fácticos y su impacto en la democracia en México

The concept of factual powers has been increasingly incorporated into the sphere of Latin American politics to refer to actors that exert large influence in diverse sectors of social life. In Mexico, this term is used to refer to Televisa and its allies as part of the debate regarding the so-called “media legislation” that took place between November of 2005 and March of 2006. Moreover, the academic and theoretical discussion has not achieved a conceptual maturity. This article aims to review the antecedents and development of factual powers and their differentiation from other actors or groups that also exercise influence. It discusses as well the power they currently wield in the electronic media, the State and democracy.     

Reformas electorales y coherencia ideológica de los partidos políticos en Colombia, 1986-2013

This article sets out changes which the Colombian party system experienced throughout the last two decades. It focuses on the topics, ideology and party divisions present in a representative sample of the last four legislatures’ congress members. This study is based on factorial and discriminate analyses, making use of the Latin American Parliamentarian Elites database. This article holds that the 2003 political reform had a positive effect on Colombian parties’ and social movements’ ideological coherence within Congress. Electoral reforms are also discussed in the light of these findings.     

Las reformas políticas en el gobierno de Sebastián Piñera Chile, 2010-2013

This paper analyzes political reforms carried out by Sebastián Piñera’s government in Chile. Te reforms considered are those that his Coalition for Change campaigned on as part of the presidential and legislative elections in 2009. Tese reforms promised an improvement in the quality of democracy, and promised its consolidation, including increased political participation, in order to counter the most common criticisms of institutions of representation. Throughout this process, the government showed little receptivity to proposals coming from other sectors, both of the ruling coalition and the opposition; furthermore, it paid scant attention to growing citizen protests and their demands voiced since his second year of government. Te information analyzed conveys little progress in decentralization and in the importance that players with veto powers were gaining within the ruling coalition.     

Aspectos políticos de la dependencia financiera en los municipios mexicanos1

Specialized literature has analyzed the impact of changes to fiscal institutions such as The National System of Fiscal Coordination (1980) and the constitutional reforms of article 115 (1983 and 1999) on the degree of financial dependence of local (municipal) governments and the governmental functioning. Political environment as well, affects to an important extent such functioning. Indeed, previous studies in the field of political economy point to the effects of political environment and fiscal institutions -such as public spending and debt- on national and sub-national governments. Based on four variables -political affiliation of the mayor, political affiliation of the governor, composition of local congresses and celebration of local elections-, the authors build indicators of “political confluence” at the municipal level. They study the effect that the degree of political unification at the municipal level has on the financial dependence with respect to the State government, and also to the local Congress. In their analysis, the authors also consider the political affiliation of the mayor and the local electoral cycle. Through its analytical focus and main empirical findings, this article contributes to broadening the scope of empirical studies of municipal financial dependence. Simultaneously, it adds to existing literature in the field of political economy that accounts for public finances at the sub-national level     

El ser del varón y el diseño de políticas públicas e intervención social con perspectiva de género

The purpose of this work is to examine the design and management of social policies from a perspective of masculinities. Various sources are reviewed -cultural, academic, educational, technical methodological- in order to broaden the standpoints from which male participation and responsibility have been considered. Finally, the study offers a series of valid and formally assembled findings to support the design and management of public policies oriented to gender equity with and from males, as it is of chief importance to promote the development of different male alternative patterns in view of overcoming violence, inequality, intolerance, discrimination, and inequity by means of political, social, and educational options.     

La mujer en México: inequidad,pobreza y violencia

This article explores the main problems that Mexican women endure, especially those which arise from the inequality that they face in numerous social milieus. Despite the undeniable progress that has been made with respect to women's rights and equal opportunities, full gender equality still seems like a distant ideal for Mexico. There have even been important setbacks, such as access to healthcare, legislation that has been enacted that does not respect women's decisions over their bodies, or in the persistence of various forms of violence that they bear. This article will begin by exploring the advancement in rights which women have achieved, in order to later describe the problems that Mexican women still face in terms of work, health, social security, education, poverty, politics, and the violence which they still encounter.     

Después del consenso: el liberalismo en México (1990-2012)

This article explores the renewal of liberalism in Mexico over the last two decades. It argues that after the long period of one-party hegemonic rule, intellectuals have embraced many of liberalism’s tenets in public debates, such as economic and institutional reform, the defense of individual rights and freedom of expression, etc. It argues that the end of authoritarian rule made this renewal possible and attempts to account for key factors that unite intellectuals from very different ideological backgrounds.     

Partidos políticos e innovación democrática: más allá de purezas y perversiones

This article aims to review the conceptual import of the term “political mediation”, to shed light on the analytical reach of indirect politics, whose scope of possibilities has been usually thought of as confined within the opposites of political representation and clientelism. An analytical exercise is put forth as a possible and tentative means not only to establish a vocabulary which may be more sensitive towards present time demands, but also to –in Bunge's words– initially allow for the reinterpretation of older symbols of our political vocabulary. Towards this goal, besides a linguistic and conceptual itinerary of the term “mediation”, each of the three analytical dimensions of indirect politics is developed, favoring dialogue with theories of representation, which channels into an analytical model we call the “cube of indirect politics”. The article ends with a brief case-classification exercise aimed at showing the displacement produced by the model in the understanding of given experiences in indirect politics.