La ñata contra el vidrio: urban violence and democratic governability in Argentina

The article argues that the increase in crime and urban violence in Argentina, especially in Buenos Aires, can be explained as an outcome of the interaction of four factors: the new social relations established by neoliberalism; the incapacity of the state to resolve the social conflicts which have arisen from these new social relations; the failure to democratise the security forces; and the exclusion of a sector of society from the rights of effective democratic citizenship. The increase in crime and urban violence is, thus, analysed as a problem of governability.     

The future of Fair Trade coffee: dilemmas facing Latin America's small-scale producers

Fair Trade has become a dynamic and successful dimension of an emerging counter-tendency to the neo-liberal globalisation regime. This study explores some of the dilemmas facing the Fair Trade movement as it seeks to broaden and deepen its impact among the rural poor of Latin America's coffee sector. We argue that the efforts to broaden Fair Trade's economic impact among poor, small-scale producers are creating challenges for deepening the political impact of a movement that is based on social justice and environmental sustainability. The study is based on two years' research and seven case studies of Mexican and Central American small-scale farmer cooperatives producing coffee for the Fair Trade market.     

On a code of ethics for policy experts

Advances in science and technology have exposed society to risks of unprecedented magnitude, which sometimes must be faced on very short notice, as in the field of nuclear power. Those developments have greatly increased the significance of the opinions of policy experts. When adversaries are pitted against one another on such issues, the risk that policy experts may lose legitimacy in the eyes of the public is very high. At such times, the concern grows that the experts' views may be influenced by pressure from their principals or by conflicts of personal interest. One step that could reduce the risk of a loss of legitimacy for policy experts is to develop a code of ethics, which would include such issues as defining the responsibility of the expert, identifying unacceptable conflicts of interest, determining the expert's obligations regarding secrecy and disclosure, and developing standards for the process of decision-making in emergencies.