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Taking the answers of over fifty Latin American scholars to a survey as its foundation, this paper analyses the features of the global and Latin American context and presents some of the potential areas for its development over the coming decade. To do this, the number of poles in the system is considered along with the logics of cooperation and competition that predominate in the relations between countries. In addition, an analysis is made of how different countries define a 'region' in their foreign policy, and the reasons behind Brazil losing its leadership position and Mexico's potential role in the region are set out. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The idea of open government has spread across Latin American countries causing confusion and ambiguous interpretations. The concepts of “open government" and “transparency" have been used as synonyms and have created false expectations, but mostly they have been used to implement public policies and government strategies to accomplish the goal of creating a more open government. The purpose of this research is to provide some theoretical elements to clear this confusion. In order to achieve such goal, related papers of academic journals over the past six years have been reviewed and classified on three main paths of knowledge. From this point a concept of open government is proposed and discussed. The aim of this paper is to contribute with a theoretical framework that supports research on open government, transparency and accountability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature maintains that not all populisms are equal. Some are seen as projects of regeneration or democratisation because they would incorporate an excluded people; others are movements that would weaken democracy by promoting exclusion (xenophobia and racism). The former is "left-wing populism" while the latter is "right-wing populism". This paper shows that what is central to populism is its model of democracy, not whether it is situated on the right or the left. To do this, an evaluation is made of the democratic balance of populisms in three countries in Europe (Austria, France and Hungary) and three in Latin America (Bolivia, Ecuador and Venezuela). As will be shown, those of the right have no more contributed to the destruction of democracy than those on the left may be presented as democratising successes; but all represent a profound challenge to liberal democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues about the qualities of the mechanisms of participative democracy as a way to solve the problems of political representation that are currently lived. It takes into account the experience of Latin American countries that have recently established in their laws figures such as the referendum, plebiscite or citizen legislative initiative, while noting the nomination of citizens without party or the revocation of the mandate. By overcoming an elitist vision of politics and an electoral conception of democracy, these mechanisms can foster participation, deliberation, transparency, accountability and, in essence, the direct intervention of the subject in decision-making, without disrupting bases of the form of democratic government in force in most Latin American countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to make a contribution to the academic discussion on the topic of relations between politics and administration in Latin America through the recognition of the diversity of manifestations of patronage in administrative practices and structures in the region, in light of other cases of massive patronage, like the American and Spanish cases at the end of the XIX century, and the beginnings of the XX century, and contemporary Mediterranean cases. The study identifies a series of cross-cutting patterns associated with the strong roots of patronage in the analysed experiences, such as as the massive politicization of managerial positions, the dissociation between regulations and the effective functioning of civil services, the systematic avoidance of career structure by using various mechanisms of escape, political filtration of the permanent bureaucracy by way of exceptional nominations or promotions based on discretionary criteria and extensive incorporation of political appointees to career system without any considerations of merit, among other practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many countries in Latin America have made nanotechnology a development priority in their public policy platforms. The main feature of these public policies is to provide support for nanotechnology research and development, aiming to forge ties between public institutions and universities and the private sector, to boost innovation and competitiveness. These public policies do not take into account the global context of strong capital concentration in which nanotechnologies emerge, and which makes it difficult to be competitive within the framework laid out by these public policies to develop these technologies. This paper analyzes the direction of public policy in the international context, and also suggests policy alternatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this paper is to analyze how despite the economic and political structural differences of the Latin American countries, the common denominator of these economies is its dependence with the global economy as producers of primary goods. This exploitation of raw materials, called neoextractivista model, carries from its own origin hoarding of land, deportation or displacement of rural communities, establishing then, for natural consequences, a spiral of criminalization and repression of resistance by territorial disputes and divergent values around them, in a context of great power asymmetry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The New Latin American Constitutionalism (NLAC) is one of the most interesting phenomena of the present compared constitutional Law. One of its features is the incorporation to the Constitutions of a wide carte of participatory tools that contain the last news of participatory democracy converting those texts in some of the most developed ones in this area. The question is if this incorporation of participatory tools improves democracy or worsens it, if achieves its participatory objectives or if participatory democracy ends or diluted in the representative model or becoming a tool in the hands of rulers that want to strengthen their power weakening the other powers of the State. Does the participatory democracy of the NLAC make a democratic improvement or worsening? This paper, by the analytic- synthetic method and through the compared study of the most relevant doctrine and legislation, tries to give an answer concluding that, although the participatory tools themselves are neutral and it will depend of the will of the actor that active them that they will be positive or negative, participatory democracy means the introduction of a direct participation wedge in a essentially representative model and can be source of imbalances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I focus on societal movements against destructive expansion now in progress in Latinamerican countries. On the one hand, I point out some characteristic aspects of the logic which promotes this expansion, stressing in mechanisms to expropriate people and communities. On the other hand, I deal with some characteristic traits of societal movements, emphasizing on territorial and sacred rights alleged by communities to defend their territories. Taking in count that these process are confrontations about the alleged universality of the modern conception of nature, I ask what contribution may offer these particular movements to renew our imagination facing to challenges by global environmental crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper work constitutes an attempt to make complex the analysis matrix about the implications of the extractive industry in Latin America; worning about differents extralegal mechanisms on wich is based the model itself. To achieve such content we appeal to some concepts and analysis axes made out by a french thinker, Michel Foucault, such as: governmentality, biopolitics, power networks, subject, and subjectivity. For the written preparation they were taking into account other literature sources, especially those books and scientific publications made by latinamerican intellectuals critical to the extractive model as they are among other the works of: Alberto Acosta, Maristella Svampa, Eduardo Gudynas, Edgardo Lander, Luis Tapia y Raúl Zibechi. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The goal of this article is to contribute to a burgeoning comparative literature about nationalization of party competition (political parties and party systems), clarifying its terminology and evaluating three different indices of measurement of this phenomenon and used recently in Latin America. This paper argues that despite the confusion in the terminology, the term nationalization should be understood as homogeneity of electoral support across the territory and that a proper measure of nationalization should take into account four basic elements: party presence across the country, number of subnational units where it is measured, its magnitude and the size of the party. The revision of the literature dedicated to Latin American countries reveals that more case studies of longterm evolution of party systems and explanation of its changes and party-centred variables are necessary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes the constitution of the area of studies on the history and development of political science in Latin America over the past ten years. Several studies have been proposed to account for this process showing the growth of the discipline in the region. In this paper we will highlight the main actors and their scientific and academic production, as well as the processes of institutionalization and professionalization of political science. This article aims to classify these studies from the early exploratory approaches up to the production of more sofisticated descriptive works, from a comparative perspective, in order to finally arrive at the new current trends that attempt to perform a “metatheoretical" approach with contributions from epistemology, sociology of knowledge and the history of the science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of new political and legal conditions, social actors in Latin America have recently developed new forms of collective action, including in particular legal mobilization. This paper intends to contribute to the study of this development, through the incorporation of elements of three scholarly traditions that have generally developed separately from each other: social movement theory, legal mobilization studies and constitutional theory. It points out in particular the contribution of democratic constitutionalism to the analysis of the role of social movements in legal change. It also proposes the use of the terms counter-movement and counter-legal mobilization for the study of collective action and legal strategies developed by conservative sectors that oppose the advancement of social movements in Latin America. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the conditions under which presidents dominate the legislative agenda. To address this issue we analyze the governmental period of 30 Latin American Presidents, developing a qualitative comparative analysis (QCA). The analysis highlights that the combination of a favorable institutional design and a division of Congress in different ideological blocs favors the Executive branch. Two other conditions, reliance on a parliamentary majority and the absence of party fragmentation, are combined with the above elements to ensure the predominance of the Executive. The findings of this comparative study are confirmed by a supplementary statistical analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]