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.     

Constituent Moment,Constituted Powers in Chile

Law and Critique - This article discusses the concept of constituent power and its application to the situation in Chile after the 18th October 2019. In particular, it discusses the relation...     

Chinese Economic Statecraft and U.S. Hegemony in Latin America: An Empirical Analysis, 2003–2014

If one interprets China's sizable rise in Latin America as an unprecedented phenomenon, it follows that the concurrent story of declining U.S. influence in the region is an event hastily acknowledged at best and ignored at worst. In this article, we ask whether Chinese economic statecraft in Latin America is related to the declining U.S. hegemonic influence in the region and explore how. To do so we analyze foreign direct investments, bank loans, and international trade from 2003 to 2014, when China became a major player in the region. We use data from 21 Latin American countries, and find that an inversely proportional relationship exists between the investments made by Chinese state‐owned enterprises (SOEs), bank loans, manufacturing exports, and the U.S. hegemonic influence exerted in the region. In other words, Beijing has filled the void left by a diminished U.S. presence in the latter's own backyard.     

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.