Militancy and parliamentary representation in Chile, 1849–79. Notes for a prosopographical study of the chamber of deputies

SUMMARY

This article provides a political and social characterization of Chilean deputies in the second half of the nineteenth century. It covers 11 parliamentary elections ranging from 1849, the first election under a relatively recognizable party system to 1879, the last election before the consequences of the War of the Pacific (1879–84) altered the local political landscape. The study of parliamentarians is based on a prosopography derived from the analysis of 405 deputies, and in this case is limited to three criteria: place of birth, profession or occupation, and age of entry into parliament. The latter criterion is a key one, because the authors focus only on members who joined congress for the first time over a period of 30 years. One of the main hypotheses of this article suggests that from the 1861 election congress experienced changes in its composition, allowing the entrance of actors who had hitherto not been part of congress.     

Are the BRICS reformers,revolutionaries, or counter-revolutionaries?

This article argues that the five-nation BRICS group has played a significant role in pressing for reforms in the Western-dominated global order, as well as mounting some revolutionary (and as yet unresolved) challenges to that order. However, it also maintains that there is another (underestimated) aspect to the BRICS' role, viz, their conservative or counter-revolutionary challenges to liberal trends towards democracy, human rights and the progressive evolution of international law. It then discusses how ‘the West’ has responded to these pressures from the BRICS, and other rising powers, and points to uncertainties raised by the recent growth of ‘populist’ pressures within the West itself against aspects of the liberal economic, political and cultural order.     

Joint Default Probabilities and Sovereign Risk

The assessment of sovereign risk is of crucial importance for international lenders and investors. Many existing sovereign risk approaches are opaque and heavily rely on subjective choices. In general, they lack a theoretical basis. To assess sovereign risk, we use the Merton model in which a loan defaults if the value of a firm's assets falls below the value of its debt. In a portfolio context, this implies that default correlations warrant the utmost attention. We analyze defaults for 37 countries during the period 1970–1998. We find that sovereign default correlations are low. Joint defaults are highest in Central and Eastern Europe. They are intermediate in Latin America and they are low in (Southeast) Asia.     

How Efficient are Africa's Emerging Stock Markets?

The development of financial institutions has been viewed in recent years as critical to the economic development process. This research uses recent data from the eight largest African stock markets to test whether these markets meet the criterion of weak-form stock market efficiency with returns characterised by a random walk. Results are then compared with similar tests on emerging stock markets in South-east Asia and Latin America. Conclusions from the research indicate that test results for weak-form efficiency in the emerging African stock markets compare favourably with those performed on other emerging stock markets.     

近十年国外助推理论研究述评及进展

助推是行为经济学、社会心理学、政治哲学、公共政策学等多领域社会科学的新兴热点交叉议题,自2008年提出后,备受国外学界关注。公众选择不免会落入认知误区,助推以自由父爱主义为精神内核,利用不同选择架构工具推进助推目标,既为公众自由选择提供了选项,又增加了做出“更好的选择”的几率。但不可否认,助推也在伦理道德上饱受质疑。     

Threat-Based Competition Policy

This note suggests a link between the theory of contestable markets and competition policy. We propose that in the absence of potential hit and run entrants into an industry the behaviour of a firm may be constrained by the fear of intervention by the competition authorities. Hence, in periods in which hit and run entry is believed to be a non-credible threat, the competition authorities can affect a firm's behaviour by the threat of intervention, as well as by intervention itself. Requirements for the successful use of threat-based competition policy are identified, and its potential benefits are outlined.     

US-Asia Economic Relations: A Political Economy of Crisis and the Rise of New Business Actors

Reviewed here are contrasting approaches to the same locus of marginalisation: the precariat in the informal sector. In developed and underdeveloped countries alike, neo-liberal economic growth is increasingly dependent on insecure, temporary and low-paid employment. Such laissez faire capitalism demonstrates additionally that – contrary to earlier views about the capitalism/unfreedom link – bonded labour is not an obstacle to accumulation, since the free market currently thrives on an unfree workforce. Because, with the exception of Marxist theory, no opposition to this pattern of economic growth argues for transcending the capitalist system, critiques of its labour regime are unable to formulate an adequate political solution.     

The Transformation of Urban Vegetable Retail in China: Wet Markets,Supermarkets and Informal Markets in Shanghai

The state-monopolised system of vegetable retail in socialist urban China has been transformed into a market-based system run by profit-driven actors. Publicly-owned wet markets not only declined in number after the state relegated its construction to market forces, but were also thoroughly privatised, becoming venues of capital accumulation for the market operators now controlling these properties. Self-employed migrant families replaced salaried state employees in the labour force. Governments' increased control over urban public space reduced the room for informal markets, exacerbating the scarcity of vegetable retail space. Fragmentation in the production and wholesale systems restricted modern supermarkets' ability to establish streamlined supply chains and made them less competitive than wet markets. The transformation of urban vegetable retail documented here shows both the advance that capital has made in re-shaping China's agrifood system and the constraints that China's socialist institutions impose on it. Shanghai's experience also shows that the relative competitiveness of various retail formats is shaped by the state's intervention in building market infrastructure and institutions.     

Transatlantic Democracy Promotion and the Arab Spring

The Arab Awakening can be seen as a symptom of failure of US and EU democracy promotion policies in the region. By identifying democracy with ‘liberal democracy’ – a discursively powerful political move – the contingent character of democracy has been lost. The US and the EU, the main promoters of a neoliberal understanding of democracy, have sided with the wrong side of history. And because they have failed to deeply revise the philosophical underpinnings of their policies, even after 2011, they risk another, even bigger, policy failure.     

Consociational settlements in deeply divided societies: the liberal-corporate distinction

Consociationalism is often proposed for societies deeply divided along ethnic lines, yet its recommendation remains contentious. Critics argue that it has a low rate of adoption, results in political immobilism, and entrenches the divisions it seeks to alleviate. Overlooked in much of the criticism, however, is the distinction between liberal and corporate forms of consociationalism, alternatively premised on the self-determination or predetermination of the ethnic groups involved in power-sharing. The article considers whether the critiques apply equally to both versions. Corporate consociation freezes a particular inter-group configuration in time, leading to drawn-out executive formation and, in some cases, to a cementing of divisions. However, liberal consociation runs into its own difficulties: consociational settlements are generally negotiated at the very point at which group identities are most politically salient and divisive. Under these conditions, groups are unlikely to settle for anything other than a guarantee of their share in power, thus making liberal consociationalism less likely to be adopted in negotiated settlements. The article also considers the factors enhancing the adoption of liberal consociational rules.