13 STR loci frequencies in the population from Paraíba, Northeast Brazil

As part of a long-term project on Northeastern Brazilians, population genetic data were obtained from 323 unrelated individuals from the state of Paraíba. The loci studied were CSF1P0, TPOX, TH01, vWA, D16S539, D7S820, D13S317, D18S51, D21S11, D8S1179, F13A01, F13B and LPL. Their distributions are in Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium. Forensic parameters were calculated and a comparison was made with geographically nearby populations.     

Expanding Geographies of Deportability: How Immigration Enforcement at the Local Level Affects Undocumented and Mixed‐Status Families

This article examines the impact of policies and programs that have expanded immigration enforcement from the federal to the local level. Drawing from in‐depth interviews with over sixty individuals who are members of undocumented or mixed‐status families, I discuss how these initiatives have extended the geography of deportability from traditional sites that focus explicitly on immigration enforcement (e.g., the US–Mexico border) to more nontraditional sites in the public sphere (e.g., driving under the influence checkpoints or grocery stores). I demonstrate how this intensification of enforcement strains undocumented immigrants’ resources as well as their participation in school, work, and their communities.     

Restrictions on legal aid in family law cases in England and Wales: creating a necessary barrier to public funding or simply increasing the burden on the family courts?

The Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 (LASPO) resulted in significant cuts to the availability and scope of legal aid in family law proceedings. Some four years after the cuts were implemented, there has been a great deal of research about their devastating impact on vulnerable groups and individuals. This paper considers the other victim of the cuts, the family court itself. It is currently bulging under pressure from both an increase in applicants who have been forced to represent themselves in family proceedings and also from a rise in applications for injunctions linked to domestic violence. This paper will draw on case law to demonstrate that the reforms implemented through LASPO have seemingly only succeeded in passing the burden from one publicly funded agency, the Legal Aid Agency, to another, HM Courts and Tribunals Service. The family court system is currently at breaking point and further government review is urgently needed if people are going to be able to continue to use the system effectively.     

The Geopolitical Imaginary of the Brazilian Ultra-Right

The strengthening of the ultra-right in the Brazilian political scenario has a certain geopolitical imagination as one of its centres. Its main authors, on the one hand, consider Latin America as something to be avoided, and, on the other hand, value the affinities between Brazil and the United States due to the idea of a mutual belonging to a Christian West. The present article explains the most current assumptions and arguments of this discourse after 2016, based on an analysis of the geopolitical imaginary of the Brazilian ultra-right. The text reconstructs three political languages of the field – the reactionary, the ultraliberal, and the authoritarian conservative, based on the analysis of four intellectual protagonists: Olavo de Carvalho, Ernesto Araújo, Paulo Guedes, and Eduardo Villas Bôas. Finally, we raise some hypotheses about the reasons for the longevity of some fundamental traits of this geopolitical imaginary in the Brazilian scenario.     

The Unexpected Effect of the 2001 Crisis: The Revival of Right-Wing Mobilisation in Argentina

The mass protests of December 2001 were a turning point in Argentine politics. However, their effects in the mid- to long term have been less clear. This article argues that the 2001 crisis had two distinct consequences. The first, which was expected and immediate, was the stimulus given to left-wing grassroots organisations. The other, unexpected and deferred, was the revitalisation of right-wing collectives in subsequent years. The article uses a multiple technique approach.     

The Effect of Ministerial Instability on Government's Mandate Fulfilment: Evidence from the Portuguese Case

Research on the fulfilment of electoral promises has been particularly fruitful over the past decades. Most of it focused on examining pledge fulfilment at the cabinet level, and little emphasis was placed on the reasons underlying the level of compliance. As a consequence, core factors in explaining pledge fulfilment have not yet been explored. One such factor might be instability in a government's internal functioning. We argue that ministerial instability is relevant for explaining a government's broken promises, and that its importance increases at the junior minister level and among the most salient ministries. Relying on data on the fulfilment of electoral promises and ministerial instability in Portugal between 1995 and 2019, backed by interviews with former ministers and junior ministers, we provide evidence that the fulfilment of electoral promises is significantly influenced by portfolio volatility, particularly at the junior ministerial level and in the most important ministries.     

Central bank independence in Latin America: Politicization and de-delegation

In the last three decades, legal delegation of monetary policy to independent central banks (CBI) has achieved the status of a global norm of good governance. The recent backlash against this independence is an important but understudied trend. Our article analyzes the potential for delegation reversals with a focus on Latin America where CBI was effective in maintaining price stability, but placed important policy constraints on governments. We theorize that, in the shadow of the global norm for CBI, the increasing distance in preferences between the government and the central bank, and the procedural hurdles to change the status quo, explain the intensity of challenges to the delegation contract or the delegated agent. An analysis of the frequency of irregular central bank leadership replacements, and instances of politicization and de-delegation show the plausibility of our argument. We also show that, in Latin America, reforms de-delegating monetary policy have been small, balancing the needs that justified delegation in the first place, but rolling back the most stringent constraints placed on financing the government.