The Health of the Rurality: The Encuesta de Folklore and Popular Healing Practices in Tucumán, 1921

This article examines healing practices among the rural inhabitants of Tucumán in the opening quarter of the twentieth century through a reading of the 1921 National Folklore Survey. It argues that popular medical practices, referred to as curanderismos (popular healing), continued into the twentieth century not only as cultural practice of the popular classes but as necessity due to limited investments in public health in the rural regions on the part of the national and provincial government.     

China's New Development Philosophy

T HIS year marks the first centenary of the founding of the Communist Party of China(CPC).The achievements made by China during the last 100 years are the result of the efforts of several generations of Chinese people under the leadership of the CPC,which has tasked itself with the mission to seek happiness for the Chinese people and rejuvenation for the Chinese nation since its birth.     

Fragile Convergence: Understanding Variation in the Enforcement of China's Industrial Pollution Law

Official statistics and independent survey data show that in the last decade China has witnessed a remarkable change in its enforcement of environmental pollution violations, moving toward more formalistic and coercive law enforcement with more enforcement cases as well as higher fines. The data also show that there is considerable regional variation with coastal areas having more and higher punishments than those inland. This article explores these findings, seeking to understand the explanation and meaning of these temporal and regional variation patterns. The study shows how enforcement varies when there is a convergence of governmental, social, and economic institutional forces. The article argues that the basis for such convergence has been fragile, as national pressures have lacked consistency and local community and government support evaporates when dominant sources of income are at stake.     

On the Ruins of the Democratic Transition: Human Rights as an Agenda Item in Abeyance for the Brazilian Democracy

This article discusses one of the main controversies in Brazilian society at this moment: the development of a national policy of human rights and the return of the debate on political crimes committed under the military dictatorship from 1964 onwards. The main hypothesis associates the barriers imposed on that human rights policy to the way in which democracy was retaken in the country and the model on which important segments related to the authoritarian government occupied strategic roles. Even today, this presents a real difficulty in terms of recovery and, if necessary, punishment for the crimes committed by the government during the dictatorship, which in turn makes the development of human rights policies more complicated.     

ADMINISTRATIVE TRADITION AND REFORMS IN SPAIN: ADAPTATION VERSUS INNOVATION

The main purpose of this paper is understanding public administration formation and change in Spain. Its development before and since the years of Franco from 1939 to 1975, is noticeably path dependent in nature. As this paper will show, the foundations were laid before the Franco regime. Then came a period of political domination of the bureaucracy and the emergence of a key structural element of Spanish administration, the special corps. The paper covers the period of political transition, democratic consolidation, and the many processes of administrative reforms. These include the reforms of the Spanish civil service as well as the deep processes of reform.