Coalition Erosion and Presidential Instability in Ecuador

This article advances the idea that coalition formation and maintenance in highly fragmented presidential regimes is not only crucial to overcoming policy deadlock, but in some cases, critical to ensuring government survival. To advance this argument, the article looks at the formation and demise of legislative coalitions in Ecuador between 1979 and 2006. The empirical data suggest that paradoxically, government coalitions became more difficult to sustain after the adoption of institutional reforms intended to strengthen the president's legislative powers. The adoption of those reforms, it is argued, undermined the legislative incentives to cooperate with the government and helped to accelerate coalition erosion. Not only did the reforms fail significantly to avoid policy deadlock, but in some cases they contributed to the early termination of presidential mandates. This article contributes to the study of coalition survival and how it is linked to policymaking.     

The Responsibility to Protect: Libya and the Problem of Transnational Solidarity

The first part of this article examines some of the legal, ethical, and political dimensions of the Responsibility to Protect doctrine by engaging with cosmopolitan proposals for its application to Libya before the international military action to enforce it was initiated in March 2011. It presents reflections of a historical kind on state sovereignty, international community, and the political theology of humanitarian intervention while assessing the nature of the moral imperative underpinning cosmopolitan assertions of responsibility to save lives in Libya. Considering the official recognition of the Transitional National Council by the enforcers of the Responsibility to Protect doctrine as the sole legitimate authority on Libyan territory, the second part of the article situates this act of recognition within a history of colonial practices that include the legal mechanism of “the protectorate.” It also discusses the prominence of imperial affects in the Responsibility to Protect doctrine. The third part of the article evaluates disagreements among certain anti-imperialist commentators over the desirability of a military intervention in Libya in order to reflect on the politics of transnational solidarity from an angle that may present itself as an alternative to the Responsibility to Protect framework. While calling for a renewed critique of violence, the article concludes with an examination of telling difficulties that afflict attempts to differentiate acts of “foreign intervention” from acts of “transnational solidarity.”     

Top Ten Concerns of 2010

Most of the issues generating the loudest complaints are persistent ones that demand appropriate policies and strict implementation in the coming years.COMMODITY prices rank first and housing prices second     

Healthcare: A Pain for the Whole Nation

PPOPLE are often reluctant to pay a visit to the doctor and will avoid it for long periods in their lives. It seems that nobody can live without medical attention however.     

Cultural aspects in the integration of the Americas

This paper discusses cultural issues that may contribute to the success or failure of trade agreements in the Americas. We use the case of Mexico and the USA to illustrate the point, though the cultural issues are also an important factor in agreements between Latin American nations. The main contention of the paper is that the more there is a push for economic and financial integration the more there is a risk of cultural fragmentation unless the cultural misunderstandings between nations are worked out properly. Managing cultural integration successfully requires a process of “intercultural learning”.     

Frictions over Export Limits on the Rise

FOR many people, free trade is all about free entry of goods and services into other countries. But a crucial condition underpinning this freedom is that countries do not willfully block nor hinder the flow of exports from their own shores. Such a position is hypocritical and contrary to the tenets of free trade.     

A Structural Modelling Approach to Predict Adolescent Offending Behaviour from Family,School and Community Factors

It seems undeniable that immediate social contexts exert an important influential role on adolescent behavioural adjustment. Research thus far has found that certain family, school and community/neighbourhood environment characteristics may influence a youth’s involvement in risk activities such as antisocial behaviour and drug use, and even delinquent behaviour. However, the mechanisms that link these characteristics to such behaviours have not yet been thoroughly analysed and prior research has focused mainly on adult populations. The objective of this study was to analyse the joint contribution of specific factors, deriving from family, school and society, which have an effect on levels of drug consumption, antisocial and offending behaviour, in a sample of 2528 youths (aged 10 to 16). In particular, in accounting for involvement in risk activities and ultimately in offending behaviour, we examined interactions among the following variables: living in a disadvantaged community, quality of relationship with parents, distrust in local police, attitude to social norms, and rejection of and from school (truancy, suspension and expulsion). A structural equation model was calculated to account for these interactions, which revealed patterns of influence with important practical implications related to social policies on risk behaviours in adolescence.