Having Your Cake and Eating It,Too: Can Regulatory Agencies Be Both Independent and Accountable?

Independent regulatory agencies (IRAs) were created in various sectors and on different governmental levels to implement liberalization policies. This paper investigates the link between IRAs' independence, which is said to promote regulatory credibility and the use of technical expertise, and their accountability, which is related to the need for controlling and legitimizing independent regulators. The literature on the regulatory state anticipates a positive relation between the independence and accountability of IRAs, but systematic empirical evidence is still lacking. To tackle this question, this paper measures and compares the independence and the accountability of IRAs in three differentially liberalized sectors in Switzerland (telecommunications, electricity and railways). With the application of Social Network Analysis, this piece of research shows that IRAs can be de facto independent and accountable at the same time, but the two features do not necessarily co‐evolve in the same direction.     

From Machine Politics to the Politics of Technocracy: Charting Changes in Governance in the Mexican Municipality1

Abstract — A typology comprising technocratic rationality versus political partisanship helps to identify several local government structures found in contemporary Mexico: political machines; autonomous-indigenous; technocratic; and modernising party governments. Case study research in over a dozen municipalities for three principal parties suggest a trend towards increasing technocratic and more administratively efficient municipal government and changing patterns of partisanship. This arises from new pressures associated with electoral opening, political alternation, new government actors, growing urban development complexity, and from federal reforms offering greater local government autonomy. However, while improved administration and technocratic governance often leads to positive outcomes, they do not necessarily imply ‘good government’.     

Singapore: The Limits of a Technocratic Approach to Health Care

Being a tiny, easily managed polity run by Western-educated technocrats, Singapore is an ideal laboratory for those who believe that there is a “logical” answer to the problem of health-care funding in economically advanced societies. Certainly the ruling elite in this not-very-democratic country is convinced that Singapore is the epitome of a rational, technocratic state in which rule is based on supposedly impartial, objective criteria. The government's achievements in the delivery of health care are at the forefront of its showcase of technocratic achievements. This article uses the Singapore government's innovations in health-care funding as a case study to explore and test the limitations of trying to apply purist technocratic premises and methodologies to governance. The limitations it uncovers raise the question of whether a technocratic approach to governance can ever deliver the promised results and suggests that the attraction of “technocracy” is a chimera.     

Learning the Limits of Power: Privatization and State-Labor Interactions in Mexico

Despite repeated conflict with organized labor, the government of Carlos Salinas de Gortari (1988–94) pushed an aggressive divestment agenda that transformed Mexico into Latin America's leading privatizer. Explanations of Salinas's achievements typically emphasize centralized presidential power (including control over the ruling party) and autonomy; technocratic and political savvy; and weak labor opposition. This article questions such a pure "capacity-outcome" approach. Of equal importance are the learning effects of repeated interaction between the state and labor, which changed the course of divestment struggles and thereby influenced their outcomes. Lessons learned in successive confrontations led to patterns of interaction conducive to widescale privatization. The article develops this argument through comparative analysis of major divestment episodes in the aviation, mining, steel, and telecommunications sectors.     

The Authoritarian Executive? Horizontal and Vertical Accountability in Nicaragua

This article uses empirical evidence from Nicaragua to examine Guillermo O'Donnell's argument that new democracies often become undemocratic delegative democracies and that vertical accountability is not enough to stop such encroaching authoritarianism. While events in the last five years have focused attention on illegal executive behavior by former president Alemán, Nicaragua's democracy actually has experienced authoritarian presidencies under all the major parties. Elections and popular mobilization have strengthened the independence of the legislature, however. Mechanisms of vertical accountability thereby have proven more effective than expected in restraining executive authoritarianism and fostering institutions of horizontal accountability. The case of Nicaragua shows that citizens can use the power balance and separate institutional mandate of presidential democracy to limit authoritarianism.     

The 2015 Catalan Election: The Independence Bid at the Polls

This paper examines the context, campaign and main determinants of how Catalans voted in the 2015 regional election. The elections were exceptional because the incumbent and the remaining Catalan nationalist parties framed the contest as a de facto referendum on secession. In this paper we scrutinise whether attitudes towards independence affected vote choice and whether they eclipsed other traditional significant vote-driving factors such as the state of the economy or government performance. Results show that, although the independence issue became a major determinant of vote choice, the elections did not become a pure plebiscite on secession, since voters also used their vote to hold the regional government accountable for its past performance.     

Australian Support for an Independent Taiwan Prior to the Recognition of the People's Republic of China*

Australia's efforts between 1950 and 1972 to create an independent Taiwan are an important, largely overlooked element of Australia and Taiwan's international relations. Australia saw de jure independence for Taiwan as a means to support the US while pursuing the interrelated goals of accommodating the People's Republic of China (PRC) and minimising contradictions between US China policy and the policies of the UK and other countries important to it. Initially Australia favoured the establishment of a Taiwanese majority‐controlled state. This preference later gave way to greater support for an independent Republic of China on Taiwan under Chinese Nationalist rule. Australia nevertheless consistently justified its policy via reference to the principle of self‐determination for Taiwan's people — either immediately in the case of a Taiwanese Taiwan, or postponed into the indefinite future in the case of a Chinese Nationalist Taiwan. Championing Taiwan independence lost its utility for Australia when Sino‐ US relations improved in the late‐1960s to early‐1970s, and it became possible for Australia to make the concessions over Taiwan demanded by China without damaging its relationship with the US. This shift preceded the election of a Labor government committed to building a friendly relationship with China. Australia then dropped its policy of advocating Taiwanese independence, and established official relations with China in late 1972.     

Exhibiting the collections of the Spanish Crown and nobility for the nation: the Count of Valencia de Don Juan and the 1892 European historical exhibition

This article focuses on the place and role accorded to the collections of the Spanish Crown and nobility at the Exposición Histórico-Europea organized in Madrid in 1892. It sets the exhibition in the political and cultural context of the Fourth Centenary of the Discovery of America and analyses the role of Juan Crooke y Navarrot, the Count of Valencia de Don Juan to understand how royal and aristocratic collections were instrumentalized in a bid to assert the place of the Spanish monarchy on the European and international scene and strengthen its prestige. Commissioner of Crown property, the Count of Valencia de Don Juan was one of the members of the nobility who exhibited their collections to the public. Therefore, his investment in the organization of the exhibition, as a non-professional curator, helps understand what the event meant for Spanish nobility. This enables us to gauge what role such exhibiting played in the construction of the national heritage and art historiography of Spain.     

Lost in Santa Martha. Limitaciones para una etnografía en una cárcel de mujeres

En este artículo propongo un examen de algunos de los obstáculos establecidos por las autoridades penitenciarias para llevar a cabo un proyecto etnográfico en una cárcel de mujeres de la Ciudad de México. Mi intención es plantear la importancia de formas de investigación-acción en contextos que, como el mexicano, se ven afectados por una profunda crisis de los aparatos del Estado –en particular presto atención a los sistemas educativo, penal y de justicia- que impacta con mayor severidad a grupos vulnerables como es el caso de las mujeres en reclusión que están en el centro de este estudio de caso.     

The Positioning of Economic Rationality in Colombia

This article explains how economic rationality in Colombia came to play a growing role in the management of economic policy and social analysis, as a case study of a process that is observed in various parts of the world. In addition to the rise of a technocratic elite, this involved the positioning of economic rationality in managing strategic state institutions and the creation of knowledge about society. We explain the mechanisms that enabled economists to occupy these positions, displacing other social scientists and sociologists.     

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.     

Yucatecan–Mexican Relations at the Time of Independence: The Yucatecan Pronunciamiento of 1821

This article will explore local Yucatecan politicking and the Yucatecan–Mexican relationship at the time of independence, using Yucatán's pronunciamiento for independence in September 1821 as a case study. This examination will highlight the fact that, while local ambitions played a significant role in Yucatán's bid for independence, this did not necessarily detract from Yucatecans' attempts to not only engage with national political movements, but also to unite with Mexico. This in turn will take further historians' recent attempts to revise the traditional perception of Yucatán as one of the more pro‐autonomous and isolated states of early nineteenth‐century Mexico.     

China and swapo: The role of the people's republic in Namibia's liberation and post‐independence relations

The purpose of this paper is to examine the nature of the People's Republic of China's relations with Namibia. Prior to liberation, China maintained cordial links with SWAPO, yet was constrained by the close ties the organisation had with Moscow and its allies. However, the absence of any alternative to SWAPO meant that China refrained from supporting any rival organisation to the Soviet‐backed movement, as it did in Zimbabwe or Angola, and the struggle for independence was largely devoid of the Sino‐Soviet dispute found elsewhere in Southern Africa liberation struggles. Upon independence, China was thus in a position where it sought to continue linkages with the SWAPO government, as part of its policy of bolstering itself internationally through the utilization of Third World support. Namibia for its part was eager for investment and economic development, and China has been seen as a useful country to do business with.     

Lascasianismo (y lucha de clases) en Tungsteno de César Vallejo

Tungsteno (1931) de César Vallejo es un texto “puente” entre el indigenismo tradicional y la novela proletaria emergente en la zona andina. El “problema del indio” y la “lucha de clases” están ligadas por una perspectiva “lascasiana” que reduce a los personajes a comportamientos binarios que se excluyen mutuamente: buenos o malos, víctimas o explotadores. Tungsteno es eficaz cuando – siguiendo el esquema lascasiano – muestra cuadros aislados de explotación e injusticia. Pero su ideología y estrategia textual tienen limitaciones para ser considerada la obra revolucionaria que muchos pretenden. Por un lado, porque el indio sólo es “indio,” falla en la construcción de una identidad indígena contestataria y alternativa basada en diferencias culturales y étnicas. Y, en el caso de la representación de los mineros, al resaltar la figura de Servando Huanca subsume la lucha de clases al comportamiento de un individuo ejemplar. Este sesgo narrativo determina la ausencia de la acción colectiva de los obreros de la Mining Society construidos como una mera “presencia” y, sobre todo, sin una conciencia de clase, la agenda privilegiada del marxismo ortodoxo de la época.     

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.     

The Disappeared and the Mesa de Diálogo in Chile 1999–2001: Searching for Those Who Never Grew Old

This paper describes steps taken in order to deal with information regarding human rights abuses in Chile during the Pinochet regime, focusing on the most recent initiative, the Mesa de Diálogo (1999–2001) whose final report was given to president Lagos in January 2001. Two national initiatives, i.e. the establishment and reports of the Comisión de Verdad y Reconciliación (1991) and the following-up of this inquiry by the Corporación Nacional de Reparación y Reconciliación (1996) preceded La Mesa and are discussed in this paper. The paper concludes by suggesting that the Chilean transition to democracy will remain incomplete if the fate of the disappeared is not fully known and legally investigated.     

Power‐Sharing in the World's Largest Democracy: Informal Consociationalism in India (and Its Decline?)

India is one of the most diverse countries of the world but operates with a majoritarian Westminster constitution and simple plurality electoral system, albeit also with a federal structure. It was eventually coded as consociational by Arend Lijphart (1996) but this coding was questioned by authors such as Wilkinson (2000) and Adeney (2002). This article assesses the nature of both de jure and de facto power‐sharing in India over its 70 years of independence and tracks the evolution of de jure and de facto power‐sharing in relation to four dimensions of diversity: religion, caste, territory and language. It questions whether the electoral success of Hindu nationalism and the increasing acceptance of ethnic majoritarianism has reduced the degree of power‐sharing in India.     

中印构建命运共同体的内涵、困境与可能性

中国和印度同为发展中国家,近年来迅速崛起受到世界关注,但由于战略和认知差异、边界问题、巴基斯坦问题以及域外大国的干扰等因素的影响,两国关系不断下滑。印度借助自身实力的增长和美国"印太战略"实施,不断挑起与邻国的矛盾,特别是加大力度与中国竞争,与其他国家一起制衡中国。在此背景下,中印命运共同体建设将面临巨大的困境和挑战。同时,中印在命运共同体构建过程中也存在认知偏差和"单向构建"的问题。不解决这些问题,中印要构建命运共同体将十分困难。近期,边界问题仍然是双方误解和矛盾加深的"爆发点",也是中印命运共同体构建的难点,这使得中印的博弈还会继续。但由于中印合作对双方、地区乃至世界影响巨大,和平共处、共同发展符合双方的共同利益。从博弈论中的"懦夫博弈"和"重复博弈"视角来看,博弈的策略会影响彼此的行为和偏好,而目前双方有避免热战的共同点,也有加强非传统安全领域的合作空间,未来双方构建命运共同体仍然存在可能性。中印双方应把握机遇,相互调整行为与偏好,不断增加构建命运共同体的正能量,以促进互利共赢、共同发展。     

欧盟援助下的中亚边界管理合作

自独立以来,中亚国家的边界管理一直无法有效保障该地区安全,也未能起到促进该地区经济发展的作用.欧盟为保证在中亚的能源和安全利益,积极推广欧盟边界一体化管理经验,主要通过BOMCA(边界管理)和CADAP(毒品行动)两个援助项目予以实施.欧盟援助下的中亚边界合作已初具规模,其最终目的是将中亚国家边界与其东部邻国边界有机连接起来,再将东部邻国边界与欧盟边界有机连接起来,形成从欧盟到中亚统一而有效的边界管理体制.     

Assessing and Explaining the Diverging Trajectories of Territorial Parties and Politics in Italy and Spain (2008‐2018)

Until the mid‐2000s, territorial politics played a considerable role in both Italy and Spain. Two regionalist parties, among others, clearly contributed to this: Democratic Convergence of Catalonia (CDC) and the Northern League. Yet evidence shows that the two parties, while starting from relatively similar positions, have followed diverging trajectories, particularly after the financial (and then economic) crisis that hit their respective countries. CDC pushed its pro‐autonomy stances to the extreme and eventually ended up supporting Catalan independence. On the other hand, the League dropped its regionalist agenda and even became a state‐wide party. By comparing these two cases, this article aims to shed light on the mechanisms that lead to the radicalisation or moderation (and even abandonment) of regionalist parties’ territorial demands. These opposite movements have broader implications, since they have been accompanied by increasing polarisation of territorial politics in Spain and the de‐politicisation of this issue in Italy.