The Neglected Nation: The CSU and the Territorial Cleavage in Bavarian Party Politics

This article examines the continuing salience of the territorial cleavage in Bavarian party politics. It does so through an exploration of the Christian Social Union's (CSU) mobilisation of Bavarian identity as part of its political project, which has forced other parties in Bavaria to strengthen their territorial goals and identities. Parties have articulated different constructions of ‘Bavaria’ to rival the CSU's dominant nation-building project. However, they have been unable to portray themselves as ‘standing up for Bavarian interests’ due to the constraints of the state-wide parties to which they belong. As an exclusively Bavarian party, the CSU has no such constraints. Indeed, the CSU's core aim of strengthening Bavaria's position vis-à-vis the German federation may be viewed as akin to that of the Convergència i Unió in Catalonia, Spirit in Flanders or Plaid Cymru in Wales. Like these parties, the case of the CSU in Bavaria demonstrates that sub-state territorial mobilisation has as much to do with negotiating autonomy within the state as seceding from it. To that end, the CSU provides a valuable case of how a regionalist party operating within a multi-level political system has sought to influence the regional, state and European levels to obtain a comparative territorial advantage.     

La ñata contra el vidrio: urban violence and democratic governability in Argentina

The article argues that the increase in crime and urban violence in Argentina, especially in Buenos Aires, can be explained as an outcome of the interaction of four factors: the new social relations established by neoliberalism; the incapacity of the state to resolve the social conflicts which have arisen from these new social relations; the failure to democratise the security forces; and the exclusion of a sector of society from the rights of effective democratic citizenship. The increase in crime and urban violence is, thus, analysed as a problem of governability.     

Reviews

Books reviewed:
Hassig Time, History and Belief in Aztec and Colonial Mexico
Baskes Indians, Merchants, and Markets: A Reinterpretation of the Repartimiento and Spanish-Indian Economic Relations in Colonial Oaxaca, 1750–1821
Caldeira City of Walls: Crime, Segregation, and Citizenship in São Paulo
Caulfield In Defense of Honor: Sexual Morality, Modernity, and Nation in Early-Twentieth-Century Brazil
Earle Rumours of Wars: Civil Conflict in Nineteenth-Century Latin America
Clarke Class, Ethnicity, and Community in Southern Mexico: Oaxaca's Peasantries
Jones and Munck, (eds) Cultural Politics in Latin America
CEDLA FRONTERAS: Towards A Borderless Latin America
Tulchin and Garland Social Development in Latin America. The Politics of Reform
Paley Marketing Democracy: Power and Social Movements in Post-Dictatorship Chile
Crabtree and Whitehead (eds) Towards Democratic Viability: The Bolivian Experience
Bailey and Godson (eds) Organized Crime and Democratic Governability: Mexico and the U.S.–Mexican Borderlands
Adams Dollar Diplomacy: United States Economic Assistance to Latin America
Smith (ed.) Democracy and International Relations: Critical Theories/Problematic Practices
Angell, Lowden Thorpe Decentralizing Development: The Political Economy of Institutional Change in Colombia and Chile
Itzigsohn Developing Poverty: The State, Labor Market Deregulation, and the Informal Economy in Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic
Nencel Ethnography and Prostitution in Peru
Potter Deeper than Debt: Economic globalisation and the poor     

Explaining Crime in Buenos Aires: The Roles of Inequality, Unemployment, and Structural Change

Theoretical and empirical ambiguities suggest that it may be wrong to claim that unemployment increases crime, always and everywhere. Multiple regression results for Greater Buenos Aires during 1985–1997 show that inequality helps to explain crime, but unemployment does not. Moreover, unemployment fails to explain inequality. The discussion also raises some governability issues.