China’s New Leadership and the World

China’s foreign relationship in the Xi era will inevitably be tinged with the Xi style,which features a strong will and a personality that has both a soft and a tough side.How will this easy-going,smiling leader perceive and handle China’s relationship with the world?We have good reason to believe that he will bring more smiles and greater ease to this relationship.Xi Jinping heralds a diplomatic revolution in China.     

TRANSLATING DEVELOPMENT AID INTO CITY MANAGEMENT: THE BARRIO ACAHUALINCA INTEGRATED DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMME IN MANAGUA,NICARAGUA

This article seeks to understand how development aid is translated into city management practice in the global South and the implications of this for the power dynamics between municipal governments and international aid agencies. The study examines La Chureca, the rubbish dump and slum of Managua, Nicaragua, and its regeneration programme, the Barrio Acahualinca Integrated Development Programme. In the article, we explore the formulation and initial implementation of the Programme in terms of the construction of an action net in which, by a chain of translations, the Programme was transformed from an aid programme managed by international aid organisations into the management practice of the city of Managua. Despite the silent infiltration of important issues brought to the municipal political agenda by the development aid programme, small acts of defiance and resistance were also enacted by local actors who twisted the Programme to fit local needs. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Regionalism through social policy: collective action and health diplomacy in South America

Abstract

This paper is concerned with the place of social policy as a driver of region building in South America. The contention is that while much has been written about economic integration, institutions and security communities in regionalism, a discussion of the significance of other regional projects has lagged behind. Social policy, particularly in the Americas, has been neglected as a policy domain in the account of regionalism. Changes in the political economy of Latin America in the last decade suggest that we need to engage afresh with regional governance and social policy formation in the Americas. By looking at the institutions, resources and policy action in the area of health within the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) this paper reconnects regionalism and social policy and explores two interrelated, yet largely unexplored, issues: the linkages between regional integration and social development beyond the historical hub of trade and finance; and the capacity of UNASUR to enable new policies for collective action in support of social development goals in the region, and to act as a broker of rights-based demands in global health governance. In so doing, the paper contributes towards a more nuanced understanding of regionalism and regionalization as alternative forms of regional governance.     

Austerity's Wasted Years

Austerity has become the norm of economic management in the EU, Britain and the USA. In each it is offered as the answer to different problems but everywhere the result is cuts in public spending, higher unemployment and low growth, none of which helps recovery from recession. Labour's response should not be to endorse or continue austerity but to initiate a Keynesian expansionary stimulus based on borrowing and spending on a huge programme of building public housing for rent. This should be accompanied by a competitive exchange rate, an industrial policy to boost the manufacturing sector and a National Investment Bank, the aim being to expand the production base so that it can pay the nation's way in the World and support the structure and the improvements Labour needs. This makes the choice at the next election the issue of what kind of Britain the electorate wants to see: a low wage, mean economy or a determined attempt to rebuild a stronger nation with a more powerful economy.     

A political economy model of market intervention

We argue that political competition based on income redistribution à la Lindbeck and Weibull (Public Choice 52:273–297, 1987) may cause distortive regulation in a competitive sector. For this purpose, we propose a model in which imposing a production quota allows the extraction of rents that are then used for vote-buying purposes. Our model permits us to analyze the response of regulatory policy to political factors, such as the size of a group of informed voters and the accuracy of their information about the incumbent. We also show that the extent of voter influence on policy outcomes is shaped by the state of market demand. In particular, if demand becomes weaker, market intervention increases in a magnitude that depends positively on the electoral weight of informed voters.     

Commemorating Chile's Coup: The Dynamics of Collective Behavior

This article examines the dynamics of collective behavior in Santiago, Chile every September 11, the date of the 1973 coup that brought General Augusto Pinochet to power. It uses a multiple‐method strategy that includes participant observation, personal interviews, and content analysis of three major newspapers during the period 2003–8. The theoretical approach emphasizes time and space coordinates of specified social actors, sociocultural emergence, a limited range of dominant emotions, and dramaturgy to describe the complexity of ritualized commemorations. It shows that incidents occurring on this date are not primarily caused by the actions of social movement organizations. Moreover, the dichotomy of “day and night” used to understand the peaceful and violent commemorations is an oversimplification of a complex network of events, actors, and scenarios that has the effect of denying any legitimacy to actions that fall outside the state‐approved practices.     

Presupuesto público sin participación ciudadana. La necesidad de un cambio institucional en México para la consolidación democrática

Over the last thirty years, Mexico has undergone an important consolidation of its institutional framework, focused primarily on the electoral and political system. This process of political change was accompanied by a significant transformation and liberalization of the financial and economic system. Mexico’s current situation proves that both processes do not yield satisfactory results when social problems are left unattended. In fact, the transition from a noncompetitive political system to a more democratic one, has not guaranteed better living conditions for most of the population, in part because there is practically no participation in public life on behalf of most of the citizenry. This article reflects on the fundamental importance of citizens’ participation in democracy. Particular attention is paid to public participative budgets as factors which may contribute to democracy’s consolidation and quality, but which have had negligible impacts thus far as is illustrated by public participative budgets initiatives that have been held in Mexico City.     

Single‐Image Rectification Technique in Forensic Science

Many researchers have been working in Spain to document the communal graves of those assassinated during the Spanish Civil War. This article shows the results obtained with two low‐cost photogrammetric techniques for the basic documentation of forensic studies. These low‐cost techniques are based on single‐image rectification and the correction of the original photo displacement due to the projection and perspective distortions introduced by the lens of the camera. The capability of image rectification is tested in an excavation in the village of Loma de Montija (Burgos, Spain). The results of both techniques are compared with the more accurate data obtained from a laser scanner system RIEGL LMS‐Z390i to evaluate the error in the lengths. The first technique uses a camera situated on a triangle‐shaped pole at a height of 5 m and the second positions the camera over the grave using a linearly actuated device. The first technique shows measurement errors less than 6%, whereas the second shows greater errors (between 8% and 14%) owing to the positioning of the carbon‐fiber cross on an uneven surface.     

Semi-presidentialism,moderating power and inclusive governance. The experience of Timor-Leste in consolidating democracy

The relationship between the choice of a government system, namely semi-presidentialism, and the performance of democracy is the subject of current debate. This article considers Elgie's proposal for a positive correlation between premier-presidential forms of semi-presidentialism and the success of democratic transitions, and discusses the way in which Timor-Leste fits the model as well as the need for a clear view of the incentive mechanisms at play. It further analyses the importance of “independent” presidents with “moderating powers” as a way of achieving inclusive governance and to facilitate democratic consolidation. Contrary to suppositions that attribute a tendency for president-parliamentary regimes to succumb to conflict between the main political actors, the case of Timor-Leste suggests that the definition of the president's role as a “moderator”, and the exercise of the function by “independent”, non-party personalities counteracts such inclinations with positive effects on democratic consolidation.