The dynamics of rural poverty in Latin America

The development and perpetuation of a functional dualism between the subsistence sector and the commodity‐producing sector is an objective outcome of the laws of capital accumulation in the periphery of the world capitalist system. The necessity for this dualism derives from the drive of capitalists to maximise profits and thus maintain low wages. Its possibility arises from social disarticulation whereby labour's income does not participate in expanding the market for the modern sector. Through dualism, surplus value is increased not only by the orthodox means of central economies—principally increasing the productivity of work to reduce necessary labour embodied in wage goods—but, in addition, and dramatically more effectively, by collapsing the price of agricultural labour by an amount equal to the production of use‐values by the worker's family in the subsistence plot. In this way, subsistence agriculture supplies cheap labour to commercial agriculture which, in turn, supplies cheap food to the urban sector where it sustains low wages. Socially disarticulated accumulation and functional dualism between capitalist and precapitalist modes perpetuate primitive accumulation in the modern sector based on surplus extraction from the peasant sector fundamentally via the labour market. This specific form of overexploitation of rural labour implies a particular dynamic in the use of labour and natural resources in subsistence agriculture. The pattern of rural poverty and the subjective contradictions of peripheral capitalism can thus largely be understood by identifying the antagonistic contradictions to which the subsistence economy is subject in adjusting to domination.     

Empirical assessment of the escabinato jury system

Abstract

There are two practical applications of the jury system: the jury of lay people and the escabinato jury involving joint decision making by legal experts and lay people. Research undertaken in this field has been almost exclusively centered on the former. This work consists of an empirical study of the role of legal suggest that the loss of a jury of peers implies the dominance of the judge's opinion. The causes and consequences of this domination have been assessed.     

Governmental and Societal Support for Environmental Enforcement in China: An Empirical Study in Guangzhou

The enforcement behaviour of environmental officials in developing countries has not received adequate attention despite enormous challenges to regulatory enforcement in those areas. Accordingly, this article examines the relationship between perceptions of support from local governments and society and evaluations of enforcement effectiveness. A model in which organisational commitment partially mediates these relationships was tested using a sample of 202 enforcement officials in Guangzhou, China. The findings confirm a partial mediating role for organisational commitment and an interaction effect between government and societal support. A plot of this interaction reveals that when enforcement officials perceive high levels of governmental support, societal support further enhances their perceptions of enforcement effectiveness. However, when they perceive government support to be low, higher levels of societal support appear to diminish their assessments of enforcement effectiveness.     

Endogenous Determinants for Renegotiating Concessions: Evidence from Local Infrastructure

The engagement of local government in public–private partnerships (PPPs) for the provision of infrastructure and public services is a global trend. Light rail services, water systems, waste management systems, schools, sport centres and social housing are simply a few examples of sectors in which the private sector is becoming more actively involved with local authorities. Most of these engagements are conducted through the use of mixed companies and contractual concessions. However, both of these uses suffer from a major shortcoming – renegotiations. Contracts are often renegotiated within a few years of being signed, and some evidence reveals that the results might not protect the public interest. This article aims to understand how and why renegotiations of local concessions occur by examining the specific characteristics of contracts (endogenous determinants). To illustrate the discussion, a case study of a light rail system is analysed, exemplifying the effect of a contractual renegotiation. The authors argue that contractual renegotiation can be useful in decreasing contract incompleteness, but a poorly designed contractual clause can allow for opportunistic concessionaire behaviour.     

Economic reform and judicial governance in Brazil: balancing independence with accountability

Conventional wisdom on judicial governance posits that an independent judiciary is the single most important prerequisite of the rule of law. However the case of Brazil demonstrates that this is not necessarily the case, as there exist tensions and trade-offs between independence and accountability. The democratic constitution of 1988 clearly succeeded in isolating the judiciary from political interference, thus enabling it to perform its role as an institution of horizontal accountability in particular through the judicial review of executive decrees. However, Brazil's unrestricted independence has progressively become a hindrance to effective economic governance, a policy area in which the judiciary has especially asserted itself The central question is whether the judiciary is too autonomous, lacking effective mechanisms of democratic accountability and external control. The paradox is that excessive independence makes it particularly difficult to reform the judiciary. This study assesses the governance of the judiciary in Brazil and its impact on economic reform. It argues that the challenge of judicial reform resides in strengthening the countervailing mechanisms of accountability to enhance the judiciary's social responsiveness and political responsibility. Finding the right balance between independence and accountability is the defining challenge of judicial governance in Brazil.     

House organ

“I live in a country which is said to have a strong ecological opposition, one which includes the Green Party, a great variety of citizen's initiatives, and a network of alternative institutions and communications media, and where public opinion is especially sensitive to ecological problems. This is not entirely false. The so‐called ecological movement, in fact, has been quite successful in the last two and a half decades. But there is also the other side of success: Now that everybody drives a car with a catalytic converter, talks about ecological modernization, and advocates an ecological ethics, the willingness of people to accept a fundamental reorientation in science, politics, and economy is much less apparent today.”     

Genetic risk and the birth of the somatic individual

This paper considers the implications of the rise of the new molecular genetics for the ways in which we are governed and the ways in which we govern ourselves. Using examples of genetic screening and genetic discrimination in education, employment and insurance, and a case study of debates among those at risk of developing Huntington's Disease and their relatives, we suggest that some of the claims made by critics of these new developments are misplaced. While there are possibilities of genetic discrimination, the key event is the creation of the person 'genetically at risk'. But genetic risk does not imply resignation in the face of an implacable biological destiny: it induces new and active relations to oneself and one's future. In particular, it generates new forms of 'genetic responsibility', locating actually and potentially affected individuals within new communities of obligation and identification. Far from generating fatalism, the rewriting of personhood at a genetic level and its visualization through a 'molecular optic' transforms the relations between patient and expert in unexpected ways, and is linked to the development of novel 'life strategies', involving practices of choice, enterprise, self-actualization and prudence in relation to one's genetic make-up. Most generally, we suggest, the birth of the person 'genetically at risk' is part of a wider reshaping of personhood along somatic lines and a mutation in conceptions of life itself.     

Detecting Domestic Violence: Spanish External Validation of the Index of Spouse Abuse

The aims of the study were to assess the psychometric properties of the Spanish version of the Index of Spouse Abuse (ISA), and to validate it against external criteria of intimate partner violence. The Spanish version of the ISA was administered to 223 non-abused women and 182 victims of intimate partner violence. Internal consistency coefficients oscillated between 0.88 and 0.98. The Confirmatory Factor Analysis failed to replicate the original two-factor structure. Using Exploratory Factor Analysis, a two-factor solution was found: physical (ISA-P) and non-physical (ISA-NP), but the items included in each factor were slightly different from the original two subscales. Receiver operating characteristic curve analysis revealed an AUC value for the ISA global score of 0.99 (95% CI: 0.98–0.99), with the optimal cut-off of 12 for detecting intimate partner violence. The Spanish version of the ISA is a valid instrument for detecting intimate partner violence in a female population.