The penalization of protest under neoliberalism: managing resistance through punishment

The repression of anti-austerity protests in Spain from 2011 to 2014 constitutes an example of how neoliberal developments are facilitated by the penal system as it limits political resistances to the imposition of precarious working conditions and social cuts. The limits imposed on contentious politics are both material (consisting of banning acts that are prominent in social movement’s repertoire of contention, fining demonstrators, etc.) and symbolic (consisting of transforming the meaning of legitimate politics by imposing new legal and political definitions). This case study is used to illustrate the interconnection between labor markets, social policies and the repression of social protest, and to elaborate on Wacquant’s approach to the relationship between punishment and other social institutions. It is at such times of political and economic crisis when institutional interconnections seem particularly exposed, arguably enabling more profound analyses.     

An unusual form of fatal ethanol intoxication

Forensic pathologists are very familiar with deaths due to ethanol intoxication. The overwhelming majority of these deaths are a result of the oral ingestion of ethanol. We report an unusual case of an individual who expired in his secured residence after self administration of a wine enema. Toxicology showed an ethanol concentration of 0.40 g/dL in the blood and 0.41 g/dL in the vitreous fluid. Scene investigation was of paramount importance in determining the unusual method by which the decedent absorbed the alcoholic beverage.     

Informal Institutions and Horizontal Accountability: Protocols in the Chilean Budgetary Process

Studies of executive‐legislative relations are usually based only on the analysis of formal institutions, although informal institutions also shape interbranch behavior. This omission leads to questionable results when scholars examine the capacity of state institutions to audit other public agencies and branches of government. This article explores how the protocols, an informal institution that shapes the Chilean budgetary negotiations, have increasingly allowed the congress to have a more relevant budgetary role than what the constitution permits. It argues that protocols accommodate some of the undesired consequences of a charter that is strongly biased toward the central government, and describes how this institution has departed from its stringent budgetary focus to encompass broader executive‐legislative agreements that enhance the legislature's capacity to oversee the executive.     

The Dynamics Of Nationalist Terrorism: ETA and the IRA

Nationalist terrorism aspires to independence or greater autonomy for some territory. The combination of territorial claims and armed struggle gives rise to a very definite strategy, violence intended to coerce the State. Nationalist terrorist organizations kill repeatedly with the aim of breaking the will of the State. They engage in a peculiar sort of war of attrition with the State. This paper analyzes comparatively the war of attrition strategy in two organizations, ETA and the IRA. The focus of the paper is on strategy: it examines how ETA and the IRA understood their activity in terms of war of attrition and how they developed their strategy subject to some constraints, such as the moderate preferences of their supporters. I show that popularity constraints account for the high degree of selectivity in their killings. The analysis is based on a combination of historical information, internal documents, and a large data set I have constructed of the killings of these two organizations.