Chile: “Y ahora, ¿quién podrá defendernos?” (análisis de la la gestión de Michelle Bachelet) PDF Imprimir E-mail
Escrito por María de los Ángeles Fernández   
Miércoles, 10 de Marzo de 2010 12:15

La celebración del Día Internacional de la Mujer coincidirá, en Chile, no sólo con el fin del mandato de la primera presidenta en la historia del país, sino con el impacto de uno de los terremotos más grandes registrados en la historia. Los embates de la naturaleza reposicionan, aunque de soslayo, una sensación con la que ella debió debutar, cuando enfrentó la rebelión de los estudiantes secundarios: las dudas sobre su firmeza. Aunque inhibidas ahora por su 80 por ciento de popularidad y por el dramatismo de la catástrofe, la prensa internacional desliza que se hubiera esperado mayor diligencia y firmeza, particularmente para declarar el estado de catástrofe. Es este uno de los muchos desafíos con los que, como pionera, ha debido lidiar y es que, si con algo es posible asociar su gestión, es con la causa de la igualdad de género.

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Brasil: Sobre partidos e qualidade da democracia no Brasil PDF Imprimir E-mail
Escrito por María Celina D'Araujo   
Lunes, 22 de Febrero de 2010 12:42

 

Abstract

About parties and quality of democracy im Brazil. Although the present process of democratization in Brazil is unprecedented, the quality of Brazilian democracy is still precarious in some ways. The political culture remains undemocratic, and political parties and electoral practices contribute to this state of affairs. The parties and political rules reinforce the reproduction of political habits that do not contribute to the strengthening of the procedures and the content of democracy. Brazil still lacks mechanisms of effective control of political action. In short, contrary to received wisdom as to voters’ discernment, the article stresses that the political institutions and party leaderships are directly responsible for the low quality of Brazilian democracy.

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PRESIDENTIALISM AND THE NEW POLITICAL INSTABILITY IN LATIN AMERICA, 1980-2007 PDF Imprimir E-mail
Martes, 16 de Febrero de 2010 15:52

 

Autor: Anibal Pérez Liñán

Between 1980 and 2007, 18 Latin American presidents were impeached or forced to resign. What factors explain the debacle of these administrations? I hypothesize that social and institutional factors interact to destabilize elected governments, and that broad popular protests may be necessary but they are not sufficient for the collapse of elected governments. A two-level theory combines a discussion of concept-formation with causal assessment. The concept-formation component determines how to define the presence of a “broad” social coalition against the president, and how to define the structure of a “legislative shield.” The causal assessment tests the proposition that street politics and legislative politics interact to undermine presidential stability. Because the number of events is small but the number of negative cases is large, my discussion of two-level theories emphasizes the need to rely on a logical framework that can link small-N qualitative research and large-N statistical analysis. An analysis of 116 Latin American presidents over 28 years shows that popular protests can be neutralized by the presence of strong support in Congress. I test the argument using rare event and random effect logistic models.

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Beyond
 Presidentialism 
and 
Parliamentarism:
 On
 the 
Hybridization
 of 
Constitutional 
Forms
 PDF Imprimir E-mail
Martes, 16 de Febrero de 2010 14:53

 

Autor: José Antonio Cheibub

The  presidential‐parliamentary distinction is a foundational one in the comparative study of law and politics, at the center of a large theoretical and empirical literature. This paper examines the categories themselves and their internal coherence.Though some debate has concerned the conceptualization of presidentialism, parliamentarism and semi‐presidentialism, relatively little attention has focused on measurement. We use new data from a comprehensive survey of constitutions to develop measures of similarity across constitutions. We then examine whether provisions on executive‐legislative relations are similar for constitutions within each of the classic categories.Although we find that within‐type cohesion is low (at least by our expectations) for all three categories, we find measureable variation in cohesion across type, with presidentialist constitutions being the least cohesive of the three categories. The results also tell us a great deal about the structure of semi‐presidentialism, a highly suspect intermediate category in some quarters of the literature. We find semi‐ presidentialism to be as internally consistent as parliamentarism, but also learn that constitutions in the semi‐presidential category bear no noticeable difference from those in the parliamentary category. The measurement exercise thus has important implications for the conceptualization of political systems.

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Régimen Presidencial y Cambio Constitucional en América Latina Dimensiones de un Diseño Contradictorio PDF Imprimir E-mail
Martes, 16 de Febrero de 2010 14:43

 

 

Autor: Gabriel Negretto

De 1978 a 2008, todos los países de América Latina han reemplazado o reformado, muchas veces en forma drástica, sus constituciones. Lo mismo ha ocurrido con leyes secundarias que regulan aspectos fundamentales del régimen político, como es el sistema electoral. El propósito de este ensayo es analizar el contenido y dirección de las reformas constitucionales realizadas durante las últimas tres décadas y sus posibles efectos sobre la calidad y desempeño de las democracias presidenciales en la región.

Las reformas introducidas a los regímenes presidenciales en América Latina presentan varias paradojas y contradicciones. Desde el punto de vista de su contenido, muchos cambios buscan fortalecer la ciudadanía y promover el ejercicio compartido y consensual del poder. Tal es el caso de la expansión de los derechos individuales y colectivos, la adopción de reglas electorales pluralistas, y el intento de atenuar los poderes de gobierno de los presidentes. Al mismo tiempo, sin embargo, existen cambios que buscan centralizar el poder, como es el aumento de los poderes legislativos de los presidentes y las normas que facilitan la reelección presidencial.

 

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Are there hybrid regimes? Or are they just an optical illusion? PDF Imprimir E-mail
Escrito por Leonardo Morlino   
Martes, 20 de Octubre de 2009 22:45

 

Abstract

In recent years there has been growing interest and a related literature on hybrid regimes. Is there a good definition of such an institutional arrangement? Are there actually sets of stabilized, political institutions that can be labelled in this way? Is it possible that within the widespread process of democracy diffusion these are only ‘transitional’ regimes and the most suitable distinction is still the old one, suggested by Linz and traditionally accepted, between democracy and authoritarianism? This article addresses and responds to these questions by pinpointing the pertinent analytic dimensions, starting with definitions of ‘regime’, ‘authoritarianism’, and ‘democracy’; by defining what a ‘hybrid regime’ is; by trying to answer the key question posed in the title; by disentangling the cases of proper hybrid regimes from the cases of transitional phases; and by proposing a typology of hybrid regimes. Some of the main findings and conclusions refer to the lack of institutions capable of performing their functions as well as the key elements for achieving possible changes towards democracy.

Keywords: regime; democracy; authoritarianism; hybrid regime; classification of regimes

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Between Constitutional Diffusion and Local Politics: An analysis of Portuguese-speaking Semi-presidential Regimes in the World PDF Imprimir E-mail
Miércoles, 09 de Diciembre de 2009 13:43

 

Marina Costa Lobo

This paper analyzes the systems of government adopted since the start of the 1970s in all but one Portuguese-speaking countries (Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, Portugal, São Tomé and Principe, and East Timor). Taking Portugal as a reference – because it was the first Lusophone country to democratize in the past 35 years and because its semi-presidential regime has been widely disseminated among its former colonies – we pose the following questions: What is the role of presidents in the semipresidential regimes of Portuguese-speaking countries? Is there a Lusophone semipresidential model? This last question is formulated considering a fact and a certainty. The fact is that considering all Portuguese-speaking countries, only Brazil has a non-semi-presidential constitution, and even in Brazil this model has been intensely debated, with semipresidentialism often proposed as an alternative to the present regime (Coelho 2009). All the other members of the Community of Portuguese-Speaking Countries (Comunidade de Países de Língua Portuguesa, CPLP in the Portuguese initials) have chosen a semipresidential system. The certainty is that since Portugal’s democratization, several law schools in the country, in general, and a group of constitutional law professors…

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"No está funcionando la democracia en AL" PDF Imprimir E-mail
Escrito por Carlos Moreira   
Jueves, 28 de Enero de 2010 19:20


Los Mochis, Sinaloa.- Un llamado de alerta para la democracia se está suscitando entre los países de América Latina, expresó Carlos Moreira, profesor investigador de la Universidad Nacional de Lanús, Argentina, y una autoridad académica internacional en temas de investigación política, quien conversó ayer a EL DEBATE antes de disertar una conferencia para los alumnos de la Facultad de Derecho y Ciencia Política de la UAS.

¿Cuál es el panorama político actual en América Latina? Podríamos decir que hay una consolidación de un aspecto de la democracia, que es el funcionamiento electoral. Sin embargo, hay algunas señales de alerta que nos tienen que llamar a la reflexión: el Estado de derecho y la seguridad ciudadana, por ejemplo, están demostrando que su funcionamiento en términos de eficiencia necesita ser revisado y mejorado.

 

¿Cuál es el panorama político-electoral en México? México ha venido progresando al realizar elecciones de manera regular, sin fraude,

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Breve balance del gobierno de Rafael Correa en Ecuador: Cero a la izquierda PDF Imprimir E-mail
Escrito por Simón Pachano   
Viernes, 08 de Enero de 2010 13:08

 

 

Uno de los aspectos que debe ser destacado en un balance de los tres años de revolución ciudadana es su ubicación política. El aspecto ideológico es uno de los dos patos feos en este tipo de ejercicio (el otro es la cultura, que ocupa espacios marginales, y de eso no se salva este artículo). El hecho es que tanto el Presidente como sus seguidores se han ubicado en ese lado del espectro. Además, en uno u otro momento, por las oficinas gubernamentales han pasado prácticamente todas las organizaciones de izquierda del país. Por consiguiente, habría razones para considerarlo como un gobierno de ese signo.

 

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Elected Kings with the Name of Presidents PDF Imprimir E-mail
Jueves, 10 de Diciembre de 2009 14:18

Josep M. Colomer

This paper is not about the consequences of political regimes based on separate elections and divided powers between the presidency and the congress, a subject that has been intensively studied during the last decades, including in this journal, but on their origins. This could be approached as a particular case of institutional change, regarding which important studies are available. But in many respects, the foundational choice of a political regime, as was the case of the United States in the late 18th century and of most countries of Latin America in the early 19th century, is exceptional. It involves fundamental issues and is usually very open regarding the extent of the decisions to be made since it may not be strongly constrained by previously existing institutions. When a new country is created, there are no rules for choosing rules. Decisions are rather based on bargains and agreements among leaders, in some cases in conventions of representatives whose outcomes are highly uncertain and may even fail to produce any agreed outcome at all.

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