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Objective/context: The organizational vitality of political parties is understood as their capacity to attract activists, keep them allied to the organization, and united among themselves. More vital parties promote greater participation of their activists and increase their ability to resist changing circumstances and exogenous shocks. Four conditions explain the reproduction of political party vitality: trauma, programmatic purpose, channels of ambition, and exit barriers. This paper aims to analyze the vitality levels of the Centro Democrático (CD) party from the year of its creation (2013) until 2020. Methodology: The paper examines the case of the CD. Empirical support comes, fundamentally, from in-depth interviews with (former) leaders and activists of the CD and experts in the party. Secondary sources are also explored. Conclusions: As one of its main findings, this work highlights the moderate vitality of the CD. Trauma has a positive and significant relationship with vitality, while purpose, exit barriers, and ambition channels have positive effects, but smaller than those produced by trauma. A variable that moderates the behavior of the explanatory factors of vitality is the strong personalistic leadership of the founder of the party, former president Álvaro Uribe. Originality: This work contributes to understanding the organizational structures of political parties and their impact on their performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective/context: The paper analyzes the causes of the crisis of Latin American regionalism, seeking the reasons that determine its nature, scope, and consequences, as well as the dilemmas posed by different exit options. Methodology: Based on a definition of the concept of crisis, a model of analysis is proposed that traces significant governance processes and crisis factors at the systemic, regional, and domestic levels, using a series of indicators that allow interpreting their impact on Latin American regionalism projects and their effects in the form of crisis. Conclusions: The findings suggest the existence of structural conditioning factors that exceed the established paradigms and political dynamics that were unable to overcome their contradictions, which led to a triple crisis of results, model, and expectations, the effects of which directly affect the credibility of the projects. The crisis, therefore, does not appear as a mere question of political will but as a complex combination of multiple factors involving states and other national and international actors and social forces. Originality: The article broadens the analytical perspectives of Latin American regionalism by proposing a novel approach that helps better understand its particularities vis-à-vis other regionalisms and opens the possibility of continuing and deepening the empirical analysis of each specific regionalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective/Context: The objective of this paper is to build a definition of the concept of the political in Marx as a third way between the autonomy and the heteronomy of the political. Methodology: This paper suggests a hermeneutical and philosophical methodology, which consists of interpretation of arguments and concepts of theoretical texts. Primary sources -hereupon: Marx's texts-will be preferred, although they will be connected with other scholars. Conclusions: The paper arrives to a double conclusion. On the one hand, the essential connection (as championed by Marx) between the political and the world of material production does not involve a reductionist, mechanistic or heteronomous understanding of the political, for material production and the political are for him two distinct, albeit jointed, forms of human freedom. On the other hand, the concept of the political in Marx has two souls: the plasticity of the human second nature and the ideal of self-transparency of the philosophy of history. Facing this dilemma, the paper claims for an open and finite Marxism. Originality: Reflections on this topic are not new, but the thesis of the political and the production as two distinct, albeit jointed, forms of human freedom seems to be a relative new contribution to the theoretical and political discussion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective/Context: This article analyses the causes and consequences of the transition from Marxism to post-Marxism in Ernesto Laclau's work by establishing four permanent themes throughout his oeuvre that are scenarios of this shift: the question of the constitution of society, a theory of the political subject, the issue of political strategy and the question of the project. Methodology: The research strategy envisages genealogical archaeology. On the one hand, archaeology allows a synchronic analytical procedure to study the different stages in the author's work. On the other hand, genealogy enables a diachronic study of the treatment of the four major themes in the successive theoretical interventions. Conclusions: This paper shows how the ontological rupture affects the theory of the subject, the strategic conception, and the position of the future. The category of hegemony and discourse intervene in a new conceptual matrix that admits the infinity of the social as a historical and theoretical condition. From this movement, developments in rhetoric and psychoanalysis offer tools for investigating the three theoretical problems, and the change of epoch opens up a reflection on the horizon of the democratic future. Originality: The article contributes to the knowledge of Ernesto Laclau's proposal, explaining the conditions of his post-Marxist evolution and establishing conditions for a dialogue in the field of critical theory that focuses on the four problems: order, subjects, strategy, and the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]