Lessons from Mexico's economic and social transition

During the past three decades, Mexico has undergone major political, economic, and social changes sparked by regional developments and, particularly, globalisation. Its experiences provide valuable lessons for other countries.     

Why do presidents fail? Political leadership and the Argentine crisis (1999–2001)

This article explores why Argentine president Fernando de la Rúa (1999–2001) failed to govern and the factors that prevented him from compelting his constitutional mandate. This study draw on current literature about leadership. We argue that President De la Rúa’s ineffective performance was characteristic of an inflexible tendency towards unilateralism, isolationism, and an inability to compromise and persuade. Moreover, we examine how de la Rúas performance, in the context of severe political and economic constraints, discouraged cooperative practices among political actors, led to decision-making paralysis, and ultimately to a crisis of governance This work seeks to make four contributions. First, it conceptualizes political leadership by providing an analytical framework that integrates individual action, institutional resources and constraints, and policy context, thus filling a gap in the literature. Second, it explains the importance of effective leadership in building up and maintaining multiparty coalitions in presidential systems. Third, it complements existing institutional approaches to improve our understanding of a new type of instability in Latin America: the failure of more than a dozen of presidents to complete their constitutional mandates. Fourth, it analyzes the way political and economic variables interact in times of crisis. Mariana Llanos is a researcher at the Institut für Iberoamerika-Kunde (IIK) in Hamburg, Germany, and teaches Latin American politics at the University of Hamburg. Her research focuses on Latin American political institutions particularly to the president-congress relations and the legislatures of the Southern Cone. She is the author ofPrivatization and Democracy in Argentina (Palgrave, 2002), co-author ofBicameralismo, Senados y senadores en el Cono Sur latinoamericano (ICPS, Barcelona, 2005, together with Francisco Sánchez and Detlef Nolte) and co-editor ofControle Parlamentar na Alemanha, na Argentina e no Brasil (KAS, Rio de Janeiro, 2005, with Ana María Mustapic), among other works. Ana Margheritis is assistant professor of international relations and Latin American politics at University of Florida. Her research interests are in international political economy, foreign policy, regional cooperation, and inter-American relations. She is the editor ofLatin American Democracies in the New Global Economy (2003); author ofAjuste y Reforma en Argentina, 1989–1995 (1999); and co-author ofHistoria de las relaciones exteriores de la República Argentina (with Carlos Escudé et al., 1998) andMalvinas: Los motivos económicos de un conflicto (with Laura Tedesco, 1991), as well as of several articles in academic journals and book chapters. The authors are grateful to Vicente Palermo and three anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.     

Reorganization in US and European Bankruptcy law

European countries have amended their bankruptcy statutes in the past decades to increase the likelihood of a company’s continuation in bankruptcy. Liquidation procedures are ill suited to realize the full value of the company as a going concern. An infusion of new finance raises company valuation and makes continuation through reorganization more likely. Reorganization preserves value, if general creditors as the main beneficiaries of reorganization play a crucial role in reorganization proceedings. Legal origins of national bankruptcy legislations are less important in explaining the incidence of reorganization than national attitudes towards failure and the prevalence of equity over debt finance. JEL Classification K12     

Mismatch distribution analysis of Y-STR haplotypes as a tool for the evaluation of identity-by-state proportions and significance of matches—the European picture

We suggest the use of the mismatch distribution methodology as an easy way to estimate the distance between all pairs of haplotypes present in a sample. This approach allows the evaluation of the proportion of pairs of Y-STR haplotypes that are prone to become identical by state (IBS), in one generation, by recurrent mutation, a statistic of major importance in the forensic field. The mismatch approach presents some advantages alternatively to the empirical one, since it is not necessary to have simultaneous information on STRs and SNPs, and it allows the evaluation of IBS also within-haplogroups. The estimation of IBS at an European scale showed that there is a high population substructuring for this parameter, increasing from southern-central European countries towards west and north, in accordance to what was found for Y-biallelic markers. This result seems to imply a more careful use of large databases for matching evaluation, even in the absence of population structure for general Y-STR diversity. Furthermore, mismatch distribution can be used to measure the distance between a particular haplotype and all the haplotypes in a sample. When applied to the most frequent haplotypes in Europe it revealed that the opportunity for IBS is not directly related to the frequency of a haplotype, but highly dependent on the proportion of neighbouring haplotypes—so, that reporting on the haplotype frequency for evaluating the significance of a match can be misleading.     

Zur Abweichung des Begehrens um gerichtliche Entscheidung vom Gegenstand des Antrages an die Schlichtungsstelle

Es ergibt sich aus § 39 Abs 1 MRG, dass die Anrufung der Schlichtungsstelle eine zwingende Prozessvoraussetzung für das gerichtliche Verfahren ist, weshalb der Antrag, der bei der Schlichtungsstelle noch beliebig ver?ndert werden kann, bei Gericht keiner ?nderung mehr zugeführt werden kann. Nur der bei der Schlichtungsstelle gestellte Antrag kann ohne Begründung einer Nichtigkeit zum Gegenstand des gerichtlichen Verfahrens gemacht werden.     

The political economy of intergovernmental grants: Evidence from a maturing democracy

We evaluate the impact of political forces in the allocation of intergovernmental grants in Portugal, as it matured from a young to an established democracy. Using a large and unexplored dataset we show that political variables condition the granting system, and that their importance changed over time. While tactical manipulation in the distribution of grants among municipalities seems to exist only in the early years of democracy, opportunistic effects are stronger in the latter years. We argue that the latter effect is due to a change in the political environment and to the electorate’s lack of information on intergovernmental grants.