Latin America (Comparative Politics)

American man shaking hands with and bowing to three Lamas at the north side of the base of the Pyramid of Kukulcan (Himpele and Castañeda 1997; see also Bryant 1996). The man and the Lamas, as well as a council of rural Maya teachers and campesinos, were participating in a spiritual pilgrimage directed by Hunbatz Men, a new age Mayan Elder or shaman-guru (see Hunbatz Men 1990; Castañeda 1996: 175–200).

Chile's geographical remoteness has largely defined the imaginaries people share about this Latin American country. Despite its historical image as finis terrae (“the end of the world”), migrants from all corners found their way to these isolated peripheral lands. Thanks to new means of transport and communication, Chile nowadays is as exposed to the global circulation of people, objects and ideas as the rest of the world. Based on a combination of archival research and ethnographic fieldwork, this article traces how old (and originally foreign) imaginaries about Chile as an inaccessible island keep on influencing how contemporary Chileans participate in and frame their perceived exclusion from a plethora of new transnational mobilities, regardless of whether they have the means and freedom to cross imaginary boundaries and real borders or not. Although increasingly under outside pressure, the value of immobility remains at the core of the Chilean social imaginary, geo-politics and cultural life.

""Since the 1980s, governments and transnational corporations from core countries led by the United States have driven a global upward
ratchet of intellectual property protection. In agriculture, this has meant strengthening the rights of seed companies over the plant varieties they develop and curtailing the rights of farmers over the seeds they cultivate. Exceptionally, from the 1990s to 2013, Argentine soy growers overcame the pressures from the seed industry, guaranteeing the right to freely save seeds of proprietary varieties from their own harvests for future cultivation. Based on a comparative historical analysis of conflicts over intellectual property on seeds in Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay from the 1990s to 2013, this study suggests that a successful mobilization of knowledge-users in struggles over intellectual property depends on (1) the organizational stability of their political representation, (2) the coordination between the organizations that represent them, (3) the existence of independent channels for the representation of knowledge-users most sensitive to royalty payments, and (4) their ability to produce a public discourse capable of drawing support from a broad coalition.""

El objetivo de este artículo es evaluar diferentes herramientas metodológicas para medir los niveles de congruencia de la competencia de los sistemas de partidos multinivel, entendida esta como los niveles de similitud que experimentan entre los diferentes distritos donde compiten los partidos. Se parte de la premisa de que todo sistema de partidos es multinivel, ya que existe competencia en distintos niveles institucionales (y en diferentes distritos de manera simultánea). La relevancia de la lógica multinivel se da en que la dinámicas en las elecciones nacionales y subnacionales no son necesariamente iguales y requieren superar el tradicional nacionalismo metodológico que ha experimentado hasta el momento la agenda de investigación sobre los partidos y los sistemas de partidos. La revisión del concepto de congruencia no es exhaustiva y busca sistematizar la literatura actual para observar las similitudes y diferencias en las dinámicas electorales nacionales y subnacionales, y las consecuencias del uso de cada instrumento de medición sobre las dinámicas que se identifican.

""Entendiendo la tesis central que Enrique Dussel presenta en 20 Tesis de Política, como la reconstrucción de una histórica lucha entre la voluntad-de-vida de la comunidad política y la potestas fetichizada, señalo que el autor solo investiga las características del primero, ciego a aquellos mecanismos por los que la potestas fetichizada libra su lucha por reproducir las condiciones de su existencia colonizando el mundo de la vida. En virtud de esta ceguera, y buscando dotar de cierta aplicabilidad a la propuesta de Dussel, introduciré consistentemente aportes de la ética del discurso para identificar los fenómenos de colonización del mundo de la vida como el campo de acción para orientar el diseño de políticas públicas.

Understanding the central thesis that Enrique Dussel presents in 20 Theses of Politics, as the reconstruction of a historical struggle among the will-of-life of the political community and the fetishized potestas, I note that the author only investigates the characteristics of the first one, being blind to those mechanisms for which the fetishized potestas pounds its fight for reproducing the conditions of its existence colonizing the world of life. Under this blindness, and seeking to endow of certain applicability to Dussel's proposal, I will consistently introduce contributions to the ethics of the discourse to identify the phenomena of colonization of the world of life as the field of action to guide the design of public policies.""

"This book provides the first systematic explanation of the origins of constitutional designs from an analytical, historical, and comparative perspective. Based on a comprehensive analysis of constitutional change in Latin America from 1900 to 2008 and four detailed case studies, Gabriel Negretto shows that the main determinants of constitutional choice are the past performance of constitutions in providing effective and legitimate instruments of government and the strategic interests of the actors who have influence over institutional selection. The book explains how governance problems shape the general guidelines for reform, while strategic calculations and power resources affect the selection of specific alternatives of design. It also emphasizes the importance of the events that trigger reform and the designers' level of electoral uncertainty for understanding the relative impact of short-term partisan interests on constitution writing. Negretto's study challenges predominant theories of institutional choice, and paves the way for the development of a new research agenda on institutional change.

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Our main concern is to conclude how South American regional integration blocks could develop relations in a specific legal frame of association agreements and how this fourth generation treaties, developed by the European Union, deal with third countries or groups of countries. More specifically, we are interested in knowing how legally bound regulations formulated in the three different pillars of these Agreements can be for integration processes or member states.

Sebastián Piñera, člen Národní obnovy (RN), byl zvolen v druhém kole prezidentských voleb v roce 2009/2010 v Chile, když porazil Eduarda Freie, bývalého prezidenta (1994-2000) a kandidáta za Concertación. Hodnocení mandátu prvního pravicového prezidenta po téměř 50 letech je po uplynutí více než dvou let jeho funkčního období nejednoznačné. Data ukazují na určitý rozpor mezi pozitivními ekonomickými výsledky a negativním vnímáním veřejnosti. Země se navíc nachází ve stavu krize politické reprezentace, která se projevuje především silným odmítáním dvou hlavních stranických koalic, vládní středopravicové Koalice pro změnu prezidenta Piñery a opoziční středolevicové Concertación.