South European Healthcare Systems under Harsh Austerity: A Progress–Regression Mix?

This article addresses the question of whether the economic crisis provides a politically opportune time to drastically curtail public healthcare in South Europe or whether, instead, there are signs of longer-term reform strategies for potentially balancing fiscal targets with the quest for enhanced value and health outcomes, when eventually growth resumes. After a brief examination of the profile of healthcare systems in Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain prior to the crisis, we comparatively assess the mix of retrenchment, restructuring and recalibration strategies. The effects of the austerity-driven reforms on current (and expected) health outcomes are also briefly analysed. We conclude with reflections on the future of public healthcare in South Europe.     

(Re)defining the Gendered Body in Cyberspace: The Virtual Reality Film

The contemporary interaction of the body with information, computing, and communication technologies in Western societies has contributed to a change in our understanding of the concept of the human being, while implying that old ideas surrounding corporeality need to be rethought. It is contended here that the virtual reality film, with its focus on cyberspace, offers opportunities for understanding the complex relationship between gender and information technologies and creates spaces in which the gendered body can be reconsidered. Films like The 13^th Floor, The Matrix, and Johnny Mnemonic display digital media and virtual subjects that mirror our complex relationship with technology. The present paper proposes three different ways of representing the interaction between humans and technology: “the penetrated body”, “the cyber-body”, and “the simulated body”. This distinction responds to a hierarchy in which some categorizations are more transcendent than others, and confer different degrees of flexibility regarding the redefinition of the gendered body in the texts involved.     

Family Cohesion and Romantic and Sexual Initiation: A Three Wave Longitudinal Study

Although the relation between family relationships and the timing of sexual debut has been the focus of many studies, research on mediating factors is scarce. This study examines whether low levels of family cohesion result in an earlier onset of romantic and sexual experiences, and whether the link between family cohesion and an early sexual debut is mediated by early romantic initiation. A longitudinal sample of 314 adolescent girls and 222 boys, aged 12–17 at Wave 1, completed questionnaires at three measurement points with three year intervals. The results showed that sexual debut followed romantic initiation for 77% of the participants. For early adolescent females (aged 12–14), high levels of family cohesion resulted in a later sexual debut and this association was fully mediated by a delay of romantic initiation. Among boys and older girls, timing of romantic initiation did not mediate the link between family cohesion and timing of sexual initiation. Early adolescent girls who have negative relationships with their parents turn to romantic relationships for intimacy and support, which subsequently provide the opportunity for an early sexual debut. Low levels of family cohesion thus primarily precipitate romantic initiation and sexual initiation appears to be secondary to this process among girls in this age group.     

Narrowing the Gap: Explaining the Increasing Competitiveness of the Venezuelan Opposition

This article seeks to explain why electoral support for the Venezuelan opposition has increased substantially, using Venezuelan public opinion survey data from LAPOP and an opt‐in sample collected through the online vote advice application Brújula Presidencial Venezuela. It analyzes why Venezuelans who had either voted for Chávez or abstained in 2006 defected and started to support the opposition in subsequent elections. It proposes several reasons: negative voter evaluations of the economy, concern for public safety, and dissatisfaction with Venezuelan democracy. While the finding that negative policy evaluations boost support for the opposition aligns with theoretical expectations, this study finds a strong relationship between having different evaluations of the quality of democracy and supporting Chávez, which shows that the advocacy of two competing visions of democracy by the incumbent and the opposition also affects voting patterns in Venezuela.     

Multicultural Institutions,Distributional Politics,and Postelectoral Mobilization in Indigenous Mexico

Contrary to the predictions of “power sharing” to mitigate ethnic conflicts, multicultural rights recognition can actually increase the frequency of local postelectoral mobilizations. This article demonstrates that the adoption of an ethnic rights regime for electing local government representatives may actually increase conflict if these multicultural laws are not carefully circumscribed to avoid violating human rights. Focusing on the 1995 multicultural rights reforms in Oaxaca, it presents evidence that legal changes purportedly implemented to recognize indigenous rights actually increased postelectoral disputes due to conflicts between county seat communities and peripheral population hamlets over access to funding by the central government. Based on this finding, the article addresses normative implications of “power‐sharing” multiculturalism, recommending that multicultural laws be implemented only together with legal mechanisms to solve postelectoral disputes.     

Mobility in pastoral societies of Northern Mali: Perspectives on social and political rationales

Since the 1980s, the so-called “nomadic” populations in the regions of Northern Mali and Niger have embarked on an extensive process of settlement. Today they mostly live in villages or “settlement sites”. But, at the same time, individuals and small groups among these same populations have considerably enlarged their area of mobility and accelerated the rate and the value of the trade in which they engage. These two phenomena could, at first sight, appear contradictory. But the observation of empirical situations shows, rather, compatibilities, similarities even, between these two concomitant phenomena. Building on innovative debates conducted in geography and sociology, this article puts forward the hypothesis that the building of villages, as well as integration into military bases and barracks, proceeds from (social) rationales of mobility, just as much as transhumance, journeys, migration. Much more than a simple displacement in space, the notion of mobility could describe an “art of doing”, a way of being to others and to the world.     

Is Communism to Blame for Political Disenchantment in Post-Communist Countries? Cohort Analysis of Adults' Political Attitudes

In this article, we apply a new, original technique of cohort analysis to test empirically whether political disenchantment in the post-communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe can be linked to the previous political culture. On the basis of International Social Survey Programme 1996 and 2006 data we find a surprisingly similar and unique cohort effect in all analysed post-communist countries, reflecting persistent generational differences in perceived political competence (interest and understanding of political processes). However, the communist legacy does not seem to be important for explaining low self-efficacy or distrust in political authorities and their responsiveness to citizens' demands.     

Islands and a Carceral Environment: Maltese Policy in Terms of Irregular Migration

Although security has become a common framework for analyzing dispositifs that aim to control irregular migration, island spaces themselves are seldom considered as security dispositifs. The case of Malta, where detention is mandatory upon arrival, epitomizes what could be conceptualized as a “sentinel island” within the European Union. This article demonstrates how the interaction between political discourse, administrative practices, and migrants’ experiences contributes to turning the island into a form of total-institution setting. The empirical data is based on qualitative fieldwork that combines ethnographic observation, migrants’ individual narratives and semi-structured interviews conducted with European and national policy makers.     

The Campesino-to-Campesino agroecology movement of ANAP in Cuba: social process methodology in the construction of sustainable peasant agriculture and food sovereignty

Agroecology has played a key role in helping Cuba survive the crisis caused by the collapse of the socialist bloc in Europe and the tightening of the US trade embargo. Cuban peasants have been able to boost food production without scarce and expensive imported agricultural chemicals by first substituting more ecological inputs for the no longer available imports, and then by making a transition to more agroecologically integrated and diverse farming systems. This was possible not so much because appropriate alternatives were made available, but rather because of the Campesino-a-Campesino (CAC) social process methodology that the National Association of Small Farmers (ANAP) used to build a grassroots agroecology movement. This paper was produced in a ‘self-study’ process spearheaded by ANAP and La Via Campesina, the international agrarian movement of which ANAP is a member. In it we document and analyze the history of the Campesino-to-Campesino Agroecology Movement (MACAC), and the significantly increased contribution of peasants to national food production in Cuba that was brought about, at least in part, due to this movement. Our key findings are (i) the spread of agroecology was rapid and successful largely due to the social process methodology and social movement dynamics, (ii) farming practices evolved over time and contributed to significantly increased relative and absolute production by the peasant sector, and (iii) those practices resulted in additional benefits including resilience to climate change.     

The emergence of regulatory regionalism: transnational networks and the diffusion of regulatory agencies within regions

The regulatory regionalism approach has increasingly claimed that a new mode of regional governance is emerging globally. Regional policy regimes, developed in broad social and economic territorial areas, affect the internal transformation of the state. The authors plan to provide comprehensive empirical evidence about the emergence of worldwide regulatory regionalism by identifying how regulatory agencies have diffused very successfully within the regional level in recent decades. The paper aims to identify, using an original methodological design, the ways in which such diffusion of agencies occurred, as this may have theoretical relevance for the study of regulatory regionalism. The authors' hypothesis suggests that transnational political interactions in each regional cluster triggered agency diffusion, contributing to the development of the regulatory state within the countries of each region. To test this hypothesis, the authors employed a data set of regulatory agencies including the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development), and most Asian and Latin American countries (+59) from 1950 to 2007, for 15 sectors related to finance, risks, utility and competition. Bayesian data analysis was used to estimate the parameters of interest.