Revenue Diversification in Public Higher Education: Comparing the University and Polytechnic Sectors

Financial stringency has been an increasing concern in the higher education sector, especially in the aftermath of the financial crisis. As a result, public higher education institutions have been under increasing pressure to diversify their funding sources through tuition fees and other nonpublic revenues. This article reflects on the institutional impact of those changes by analyzing a panel of 30 higher education institutions from the Portuguese public university and polytechnic sectors for the period between 2003 and 2009. The authors explore the relevance of institutional characteristics such as enrollments in undergraduate and postgraduate programs, the qualifications of academic staff, and the regional environment where institutions are located. Results suggest that certain institutional characteristics related to mission differentiation and the path of development of binary systems are important determinants of higher education institutions’ ability to earn income from tuition fees and other nonpublic sources.     

A Natural Experiment in Political Decentralization: Local Institutions and Citizens' Political Engagement in Uruguay

The potential democratizing effect of political decentralization reforms has been a matter of substantial theoretical and empirical debate. This article analyzes the effect of local democratic institution building on the political attitudes and behavior of citizens living in small towns in Uruguay. More specifically, using a natural experiment design, this research seeks to establish the causal impact of recently established elections of local authorities on individuals' political engagement. It develops a comparative case study analyzing the consequences of this institutional innovation in two towns. It shows that individuals from the town where citizens have the opportunity to elect their local authorities have more positive attitudes toward politics than those from the town without such elections.     

Compulsory Voting Rules,Reluctant Voters and Ideological Proximity Voting

Political Behavior - Political theorists have argued that democracies should strive for high turnout, leading to an argument for the introduction of compulsory voting, one of the surest ways to...     

New Paths: Globalization in Historical Perspective

This essay argues that the historical–structural framework of analysis is still useful to describe the transformations generated by globalization in the underdeveloped countries, provided that it is employed with the subtlety needed to avoid reductionism. Globalization, in the same way as dependency, is nothing more than an unfolding of the capitalist system in today's historical conditions. The structural starting point conditions—but does not determine—the shape taken by economic and political processes. Political strategies for integrating into the global economy have a certain margin of autonomy. Still, the range of feasible strategies depends on factors that differ from country to country, such as the local capacity of income accumulation, the presence of foreign direct investment, the mix between nationally controlled production and production controlled by multinationals, the participation of the public sector in production, the capacity of the leadership, the prevailing ideologies, and so forth. In other words, there are alternative paths.     

Suicide by band saw

Suicidal injuries caused by power tools have rarely been reported in the literature. The case of a 37-year-old white male schizophrenic patient who sustained a fatal self-inflicted neck injury from a band saw, while engaging in occupational therapy, is presented. Unusual features of this type of injury as noted at postmortem examination were the extent of the wound, the absence of hesitation injuries, and the presence of grease wipe, bone dust, and sawdust within the wound.     

Thoughts about a model of constitutional articulation of the public power in the field of biomedical sciences]

This article analyses from a substantive and organizational point of view the current scope of competence of the Spanish public powers in the field of biomedical sciences. The general rule is established whereby the competence belongs to the State. The autonomous communities opt for silence, except for exceptional cases (Cantabria, Catalu?a, Madrid). Given this situation coupled with the lack of rulings by the Consitutional Tribunal on the possible conflicts that could arise between an autonomous community and the State in the field of biomedical sciences, Profesor Fonseca correctly concludes that there is a need to draft an express distribution of competences between the different public powers in this matter.