Trade openness and public expenditure. The Spanish case, 1960–2000

The empirical link between the post-WWII expansion of international market integration and the growth of national public expenditure has been widely noted, with no consensus as yet regarding the interpretation of this correlation. We posit that a likely link between increased openness and public spending is the use of the latter to offset changes in the distribution of income that result from increased openness. To explore this potential link, we study time series data from Spain in 1960–2000, a period of major changes in political organization as well as in both fiscal and trade policy. We find evidence that democracy reinforced the causal relation from increased openness to greater public expenditure. Thus, the paper contributes to the literature that emphasizes that changes in political regimes are potentially important determinants of the observed international patterns of openness and government size.     

The Politics of the Lisbon Strategy: The Changing Role of the Commission

This article examines the politics of the Lisbon strategy before and after its major watershed reform in 2005, with particular attention to the role of the European Commission. Operating in an ambiguous partial delegation of power, the Commission changed from performing a strong administrative role in the 2000–04 period to performing a political role after 2005. The institutional analysis of this article combines contextual factors and internal factors for explaining this variation. The findings reveal that although internal factors play an important part in explaining change, they are highly related to contextual factors. More precisely, the ability of the Commission to unfold actively its ideological and normative leverage and unfold specific forms of procedural leverage after 2005 is highly related to the member states' decision to clarify the formal division of tasks between them and the Commission. In other words, situations of procedural ambiguity are not necessarily to the advantage of the Commission, since it does not invariably have the ability to use this ambiguity in its favour.     

Housing Subsidies and Early Childhood Development: A Comprehensive Review of Policies and Demonstration Projects

ABSTRACT

In this article, we ask how housing subsidies might influence young children. We examine two national housing policies – public housing assistance and the Section 8 vouchers program – and two demonstration projects that aimed to improve the administration of providing housing subsidies – HOPE (Homeownership Opportunities for People Everywhere) VI and Moving to Opportunity. This article is a critical examination of these policies and demonstration projects in relation to the following housing dimensions that promote the healthy development of young children: income supplements residential stability, physical environment, access to services and amenities, housing choice, neighborhood safety, and social capital. We compared advantages and limitations of each of these national housing policies and demonstration projects and examined ways in which they might influence children in these housing dimensions. The article concludes with implications and future research directions for U.S. housing policy by discussing its most recent U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) initiative, Rental Assistance Demonstration, in addressing limitations of housing policies and demonstration projects we examined.     

Liberal Democracy and Neoliberalism: A Critical Juxtaposition

In this essay I argue that neoliberalism is both an economic and a political doctrine and that its historical trajectory, both conceptual and political, especially in the United States, is better understood in relation to its complex relationship of affinity with liberal democracy. The intersection between liberal democracy and neoliberalism is thus better apprehended from the perspective of the separation of the economic and the political in capitalism and the relative autonomy that it structurally grants to each field of power. Liberal democracy has provided a depoliticized framework that nurtures neoliberalism, while providing it with a cloak of legitimacy. Stated somewhat differently, the historical trajectory of liberal democracy, as a theory and as a practice of power, betrays an anti-democratic tendency that leads to depoliticization and has quelled the democratic politics that once gave credence to it, thus paving the way for the rise of neoliberalism.     

European Attitudes Toward Space Exploration and Exploitation

A standard microeconomic tool is used to analyze quantitative data to reveal the attitudes of European states toward space exploration and exploitation. The contemporary economic crisis uncovers the real political priorities. The tool used helps us to distinguish between three policy types: activist, active, and passive. Words can radically differ from real actions of governments, as is shown in this article. Results indicate that there is a relatively strong core of supporting states of space exploration and exploitation in the middle of the European continent.     

Sex assessment from the carpals bones: discriminant function analysis in a 20th century Spanish sample

Sex assessment is one of the first essential steps in human identification, in both medico-legal cases and bio-archaeological contexts. Fragmentary human remains compromised by different types of inhumation or physical insults may frustrate the use of the traditional sex estimation methods, such as the analysis of the skull and pelvis. Currently, the application of discriminant functions to sex unidentified skeletal remains is steadily increasing. However, several studies have demonstrated that, due to variation in size and patterns of sexual dimorphism, discriminant function equations are population-specific [1,2,5,12,61]. In this study, in order to improve sex assessment from skeletal remains and to establish population-specific discriminant functions, the diagnostic values of the carpal bones were considered. A sample of 100 individuals (50 males and 50 females) of known sex and age was analyzed. They belong to a 20th century identified collection from the Municipal Cemetery of "San José", Granada (Spain) and housed in the Laboratory of Anthropology, Faculty of Medicine, University of Granada (Spain). The age of the individuals ranged between 22 and 85 years. Between four and nine measurements of each carpal bone were performed [41,59]. Discriminant function statistics showed a sex assessment accuracy as high as 97.8%. The results suggest that carpal bones can be used for assessing sex in both forensic and bio-archaeological identification procedures.     

Development of a real-time PCR assay to control the illegal trade of meat from protected capercaillie species (Tetrao urogallus)

A rapid and highly species-specific real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) assay has been developed for the detection of capercaillie DNA (Tetrao urogallus) in meat and meat mixtures. The method combines the use of capercaillie-specific primers, that amplify a 142bp fragment of the mitochondrial 12S rRNA gene, and a positive control primer pair that amplifies a 141bp fragment of the nuclear 18S rRNA gene from eukaryotic DNA. SYBR(?) Green dye or TaqMan(?) fluorogenic probes were used to monitor the amplification of the target genes. Results obtained with the use of TaqMan(?) probes as detection platform increased the specificity of the real-time PCR assay in comparison with the results obtained using SYBR(?) Green. The proposed real-time PCR assay represents a rapid and straightforward method for the accurate identification of capercaillie that could be used by law enforcement agencies as a tool for the control of poaching and illegal trade of meat from this protected species.