Marx as an a-Ricardian: value,money and price at the beginning of Capital

The fundamental distinction between Ricardo and Marx is once more examined, chiefly with reference to the current spread, among some leftwing economists, of a neo-Ricardian school. So a crucial point seems to be the particular meaning, which is quite a-Ricardian, of the first section of the Capital. Anyhow, this section is often misunderstood, because of its difficulty, and its philosophical form.     

Authoritarian Regimes and Their Permitted Oppositions: Election Day Outcomes in Cuba

Electoral opposition to long‐established authoritarian regimes may be loyal or rejectionist. Loyal oppositionists vote to send a selective signal to rulers; rejectionist oppositionists vote blank or void the ballot in full disapproval. In Cuba, the number of candidates equals the number of seats, yet voters may vote blank, void, or selectively (choosing some but not all candidates on the ballot), although the Communist Party has campaigned for all candidates. This article uses a unique dataset for Cuba's 2013 National Assembly elections to study aggregate opposition outcomes. It shows the emergence of a loyal opposition, which sometimes votes for and sometimes against Communist Party candidates. The rejectionist opposition, stable over time, never votes for Communist Party candidates; it is found where the Communist Party behaves monopolistically. This combined opposition has better national‐level political information; it comes from more educated or larger urban areas or areas closer to Havana.     

Entre la pampa del lenguaje y el alambrado de la escritura: la mancha roja como síntoma de la ambigüedad de lo real en La ocasión de Juan José Saer

La presencia recurrente del color rojo en La ocasión de Saer desempeña una función desestabilizadora en relación a la representación figurativa. En el artículo se establecen analogías entre esta función y el elemento voluble, no mimético de la pintura que el pensador e historiador de arte, Georges Didi-Huberman, denomina como “pan” en contraste con el detalle, categoría asociada con el carácter icónico de la pintura. Al igual que el “pan”, las manchas rojas en la novela apuntan a la dimensión de lo real que se resiste a la legibilidad y señala los límites de la narrativa realista. Saer se vale de contrastes cromáticos para aludir a tensiones políticas y epistemólogicas y a las paradojas de escribir una novela situada en el siglo diecinueve pero incorporando la experiencia literaria del siglo veinte.     

New frontiers: an enriched perspective on extraction frontiers in Indonesia

Changes in the nature, scale, and speed of natural resource extraction, especially in the last two decades, have resulted in many new resource extraction areas emerging across the world. By zooming in on Indonesia, this article shows that the underlying causes and consequences of current trends are more complex than portrayed by the rancher-squatter model of frontiers that is still frequently used to explain these developments. We argue that a broadened frontier notion is necessary to address the multifaceted nature of the processes underway in contemporary Indonesian extraction areas, as well as beyond. We propose a perspective that pays explicit attention to four new developments that can be described by using the hybridization of space, time, actors, and rules, and are characterized by the fact that these processes create new perimeters in all four mentioned areas. In so doing, we challenge, broaden, and renew the meaning of frontiers.     

Administrative Innovations and Accountability Failures: The Termination of the Spanish Telecommunications Agency

We discuss how far accountability practices may be relevant to the success of independent regulators in countries without a tradition of administrative autonomy. We develop a conceptualisation of agency accountability failures and develop an analytical framework to examine the life and termination of the Spanish regulatory agency for telecommunications, CMT (Comisión del Mercado de las Telecomunicaciones - Telecommunications Market Commission). We argue that the CMT’s termination was related, among other reasons, to accountability failures in its institutional design. The paper relies on a variety of sources, including legislation, literature, media coverage, and semistructured interviews with agency officials and several stakeholders.     

Ritual Demonstrations versus Reactive Protests: Participation Across Mobilizing Contexts in Mexico City

Using an innovative survey of protest participants and nonparticipants from five major street demonstrations in Mexico City in 2011 and 2012, this study tests the assumption that influences on protest participation vary across different types of events; namely, ritual demonstrations and reactive protests. The comparison is based on two assumptions: that these are two of the dominant forms of protest in contemporary Latin America, and that specifying the context for different types of social movement participation provides a better understanding of the individual mobilization process for groups seeking to defend their rights or gain new benefits. The comparative analyses reveal some crucial differences. Political interest and previous political experience are more influential in the decision to take part in reactive demonstrations. For ritual demonstrations, the decision to participate tends to be driven more by personal and organizational connections.     

Corruption and electoral campaigns in Mexico: A case study of the federal electoral process in 2018

The article analyzes the relationship that exists between electoral campaigns and corruption, studying the case of Mexico. The most common ways and means of practicing and presenting corruption during these electoral processes are described. In addition, the circle of corruption that begins during the electoral processes and continues once in the government is described. In the same sense, the results of an opinion survey in the Metropolitan Zone of Guadalajara (ZMG) on corruption during electoral campaigns are presented. It is concluded that, many times, corruption in the government begins during the electoral stage, so it is important to articulate various strategies and legal instruments to inhibit it from the electoral stage.     

Human Dignity as a Form of Life: Notes on Its Foundations and Meaning in Institutional Morality

In normative terms, human dignity usually implies two consequences: (a) human beings cannot be treated in some particular ways due to their condition as humans; and (b) some forms of life do not correspond to the ideal life of our community. This study consists in discussing the meaning of this idea of human dignity in contrast to the concept of humiliation in the context of institutional, i.e. political and legal, rights. Two concepts of human dignity will be discussed. The first absolute/necessary and formal/transcendental concept implies the proposition “because human beings have dignity, the following cluster of rights is valid”. Conversely, the second contingent and material concept corresponds to the thought “for being able to live in dignity, we must respect the following rights”. This paper claims that human dignity should be understood as the right to be protected from humiliation. Humiliation is the situation of incapacity or absence of self-determination.