Using an evolutionary perspective to understand the relationship between physical aggression and academic performance in late adolescents

In this study, we applied an evolutionary perspective to analyze the relationship between aggressiveness, academic performance, and sociality in a population of 528 adolescents of both sexes. In men, we expect physical aggression (PA) and sociality to be negative predictors of academic performance. However, in women, PA would be a negative predictor of academic performance, and sociality a positive one. Our results report a negative association between academic performance and PA in both sexes. As we expected, social effect derived from the use of PA seems to be different for each sex, where men could display a rebellious attitude to increase chances of finding a mate. In contrast, results for women are not conclusive, because no relationship between academic performance and any aggressive mechanism, were predicted by sociality. We conclude that an evolutionary framework, which includes sex-specific hypotheses, is appropriate to obtain a holistic perspective of this phenomenon.     

Economic Crisis and Support for Democracy in Europe

The study of the impact of the economic crisis on attitudes toward democracy tends to be focused on satisfaction with specific democratic institutions. This article expands upon previous research to explore how the current economic crisis can affect core support for democracy as a regime. Based on European Social Survey data for the Eurozone countries, the findings are twofold. It is shown, firstly, that perceptions of the state of the economy have an impact both on satisfaction with and support for democracy, and, secondly, that citizens’ support for democracy is greater in bailed-out countries. In countries that have experienced intervention, the more critical citizens and those less satisfied with the outputs of democracy are the stronger advocates of democracy. The article argues that this is connected with the tendency of critical citizens in bailed-out countries to blame external agents for the economic situation while increasing the saliency of democratic rules as a reaction to the imposition of unpopular measures.     

Campaigning to eradicate court delay: power shifts and new governance in criminal justice in Argentina

Since the transition to democracy court delay has been a powerful signifier of the problem of the criminal justice in Argentina. This has been the case particularly in the Province of Buenos Aires where court delay was constantly projected by the Provincial Government’s narrative as evidence of injustice and/or inefficiency in the system. It has been the focus of sustained political attacks upon judges, defence lawyers and public prosecutors by members of the national and provincial parliaments of Argentina. These narratives of court delay have enabled a number of reforms of the criminal justice system which have reshaped organisational practices to the extent of constituting a new and different strategy of producing justice. This article identifies, describes and makes sense of those discourses and practices, and the strategies and tactics behind them by analysing the governmental narrative and the judicial and organisational reforms.