Alternatives to the constitution of Cádiz in New Spain: republicanism and the insurgent constitutional decree of Apatzingán (1814)

This article compares the Decreto Constitucional para la libertad de la América Mexicana, published in Apatzingán by the insurgents of New Spain in 1814, with the 1812 Constitution of Cádiz which established a constitutional monarchy in the Spanish Empire. It argues that the Decreto Constitucional cannot be understood as simply a product of Hispanic political thought and a reflection of the Cádiz text. Rather, it contends that the decree published in Apatzingán represents an alternative republican response to the dissolution of the Spanish monarchy. This alternate constitutional settlement drew on the debate of constitutional ideas that had taken place in New Spain since 1808 and was grounded in many of the same ideas as those present in the Pennsylvanian Constitution of 1776 and the first French republican constitutions of 1793 and 1795.     

Poderes fácticos mediáticos: una agenda de investigación

Based on the recognition of the importance of the commonly referred to as factual powers in Mexico’s political life, and specifically in the media power, the author calls upon our attention the insufficient analysis and research on the subject and underscores the need to overcome this deficit by systematically and rigorously approaching it as a subject of inquiry and as part of a research agenda. This article brings to the fore the basic points of such an agenda and proposes a multidisciplinary analytical approach to develop it. The author argues that the studies’ findings can be applied to constructing limits for the exercise of media power, which are indispensable for national democratic development.     

Integración,mestizaje y nacionalismo en el México revolucionario. Forjando Patria de Manuel Gamio: la diversidad subordinada al afán de unidad

This paper analyzes the integration program in Manuel Gamio's Forjando Patria as a national project arising in the historical context of revolutionary Mexico, where cultural diversity is conditional on the idea of unity. Firstly, we trace the relationship of the integration program with its history, the concepts of “mestizaje” and “mestizo” of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Secondly, we analyze the influence of some European models of nationality and socio-cultural change on Gamio's integrationism, in the context of socio-ethnic heterogeneity in Mexico during 1916. Finally, we highlight the links between the concepts of cultural diversity become visible, nation and nationalism in this author's work.     

Los modos de decir en la política. Una intervención al análisis del discurso

The aim of this article is to discuss essential notions of political discourse analysis in the light of Jacques Rancière's theoretical proposals. To achieve this purpose, we will review definitions and categories with which different authors contributed to the development of that discipline. We suggest that this approach of political enunciation analysis would improve the episte-mological organization of the discipline and, at the same time, would allow for reconsideration of problematic issues of contemporary politics (collective building). With this approach, we can also reflect on the work of the analyst as part of an emancipation project.     

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.     

Encounters with Europe in an Era of Domestic and International Turmoil: Is Turkey a De-Europeanising Candidate Country?

Abstract

This article provides a novel conceptual framework to understand the impact of the European Union on Turkish politics and policies in the aftermath of the opening of accession negotiations in 2005. It argues that the post-2005 developments in Turkey not only attest to lesser and more limited Europeanisation, but also entail a process that is increasingly gaining momentum in the country and which is referred to as ‘de-Europeanisation’.     

Planteamiento teórico y evidencia del desplazamiento gradual del Estado autoritario al Estado pragmático en México: la transformación de las élites

Analyses of political change in Mexico since the government shift achieved in July 2000 have been undertaken with a focus on the democratic political transition that led to the so-called alternation, that is, from the stance of a classical approach about State transformations that led from an authoritarian stage to democratization. Analytical approaches in Mexico concerning political change are focused on the undeniable democratic practice at the ballot boxes; however, the outcomes' transparency, the adoption of a new regime, and the procedural condition of the young Mexican democracy make it appropriate to consider this shift from the realist view of the exercise of power and major mechanisms for the establishment of élites' political-governmental decisions. Thus, pragmatism is put forward as an alternative political approach. This article intends to establish that political change in Mexico has gradually changed from its past condition as an authoritarian State to become a pragmatic State, favored by the advent of governmental technocracy, globalization, the market, the us hegemonic ideology, and the obvious involvement of corporate elites contained in State power institutions.     

Organising Everyday Resistance: An Ethnographic Study of Rickshaw Drivers in Bogotá

Workers in the informal transport sector are often exposed to multiple forms of workplace violence, for instance by the police and their colleagues. Through a collection of rich ethnographic stories and using the concept of popular resistance, this article investigates how and under what conditions rickshaw drivers in Bogotá resist violence in their workplace. The results reveal that rickshaw associations have been essential in articulating acts of everyday resistance to the legal ban on this activity, such regulating routes, fees and stops. However, associations have created new forms of oppression, being labelled as mafia-like organisations, showing that resistance can also translate into new forms of domination. Contrary to the argument that everyday resistance is uncoordinated, this article shows that acts of everyday resistance can be organised by actors that switch between different individual and collective strategies. Thus, organisations can provide a framework to resist the law on an everyday basis.     

The İnönü era translation movement: classics in the service of Turkish nationalism

In 1939, a comprehensive and systematic translation movement began in Turkey under the supervision of ‘Turkish humanists’ who believed in the survival of the traces of ancient Greek culture within the daily lives and literary traditions of Anatolian peoples. This article, which is based on the premise that translations should be discussed as records of cultural contestation and ideological struggles rather than as simple linguistic transpositions, examines this state-sanctified movement vis-à-vis the nationalist project. The Turkish humanists’ belief in a geography-based nationalism was promoted by the state insofar as their attempt to influence the direction of the development of ‘nascent’ Turkish identity and literature coincided with the aims of the state. Ostensibly initiated to introduce the Turkish reading public to Western classics, the translated texts were used, I argue, as a means in fashioning and controlling the emergent national identity during the first decade of the Inonu era.     

Encounters with panaceas: reading flyers and posters on ‘traditional’ healing – a reply to Kadenge and Ndlovu (2012)

Kadenge and Ndlovu [2012. “Encounters with Panaceas: Reading Flyers and Posters on ‘Traditional’ Healing in and Around Johannesburg's Central Business District.” Journal of Contemporary African Studies 30 (3): 461–482] evaluated flyers and posters that advertise traditional and alternative healing methods which they regard as viable alternatives to biomedicine that may well transmit potent knowledge and facilitate new ways of thinking. They furthermore view these flyers and posters as a demonstration of the advertisers’ ‘adaptability’ and ‘sensitivity’ towards their customers (480–481). This article is a rebuttal of the aforementioned position towards, and judgement of these advertisers. Reading these flyers and posters from a misleading advertising and Kantian perspective reveals not a demonstration of adaptability, but rather dishonesty and exploitation; rather than transmitting ancient knowledge, they reinforce superstition and fear. These advertisements, often misleadingly clad as African, do not facilitate new ways of thinking, but merely facilitate deception.     

Was Hugo Chávez to Blame? Media Depictions of Polarisation in Venezuela, 1998–2013

This article explores how seven leading western newspapers covered the topic of polarisation in Venezuelan society during the Chávez era. It found that the media largely ignored the debate as to whether Hugo Chávez was the catalyst or consequence of polarisation. It virtually unanimously presented him as a divisive, polarising character destroying democracy, contrary to the lived experiences of many Venezuelans, while ignoring other possible explanations for the polarisation. It also found that there was a strong similarity in how the liberal and conservative, British and American press covered the issue, with virtually no differences in explanations or outlook, thus manufacturing consent for the elite view of the issue.     

Challenges to decentralisation in Ghana: where do citizens seek assistance?

Decentralisation in Ghana, and across sub-Saharan Africa, faces a number of challenges to successful local governance provision because there are a number of formal and informal actors to choose from. Citizens may take problems they want a governance provider to solve to a member of parliament or a district assembly person, a traditional chief or a police officer, a neighbour or an NGO. In this article we report on a four-constituency survey administered to explore and understand how citizens choose between the options of local institutions available to them in order to solve a problem important to their community or themselves. We find that formal national (Parliamentarians) and informal traditional (Chiefs) institutions are where respondents turn for assistance most often instead of constitutionally described local modes of governance (District Assemblies). We consider the implications of this finding in terms of decentralisation in Ghana and the need to build institutions that are context-sensitive and reflect how citizens understand political options.     

The Italian Welfare State in the Crisis: Learning to Adjust?

Abstract

After a decade of inertia, that left it unprepared to withstand the blow of the great recession, the Italian welfare state has witnessed significant changes since 2012. Externally driven consolidation in the wake of the sovereign debt crisis spurred yet another wave of social policy reforms after that of the 1990s. These reforms did not however invariably entail retrenchment. Both the Monti and the Renzi governments combined liberalisation with expansion of social rights, particularly in income support. As a result, the Italian welfare state looks more comprehensive than it was before the crisis. At the same time, there was no overall strategy of welfare modernisation based on coordinated social investment measures. The changes in Italian social policy since the outburst of the great recession highlight the importance of domestic politics interacting with external drivers of change. They also facilitate an assessment of the opportunity structures for further reforms in a political system that appears to be veering again towards consensus democracy.