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This study inquiries into the evolution of the concept of Security in the Chilean Defense White Papers published in 1997, 2002 and 2010. This work consists of a conceptual critical analysis of the texts in a comparative perspective. It focuses on five variables: definition of Security; definition of Defense; referent object; sectors of Security; definition of Threat. The results bring into light a process to narrow the reach of the military instrument; an increasing political interest to separate Security from Defense; an inorganic intend to incorporate Human security; and the displacement of Threat as an articulating axis of Defense planning. As a main conclusion, the concept of security evolves significantly according to the Chilean Defense White Papers. The relevance of this issue rests upon the fact that the conceptualization of security delineates the employment of the instruments of defense. The contribution of the study consists of disaggregating the evolution of the concept of Security to further understand the political modifications to the parameters of action of the military instrument in the country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dependence Theory has been deemed as an obsolete approach for the study of Latin-American reality. The success in other peripheral geographic areas that managed to position themselves at the core of the world economy by the end of the 20th century apparently meant that the said theory was not valid anymore. However, the Latin-American countries are still not capable to correct the structural deficiencies that inspired the inception of the dependence, as they are still today significantly dependent on the raw material trading. This paper aims to resume the debate on the Dependence Theory in order to recover some valuable insights for the reflection on the current socioeconomic trends in this region. This work attempts, in turn, to redefine the most rigid and obsolete theoretical aspects of the Dependence Theory in order to underline how it influenced current development discourses. In this vein, this paper highlights the parallel facts between the Dependence Theory and the academic literature on development and primary resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Bogotá Organic Statute --EOB, after the Spanish acronym-- set outs the relationships between the city central administration and its 20 local districts and provides the guidelines for a district-based decentralization in Bogotá. This paper gathers three viewpoints emerging from a recent research conducted by the inter-faculty research group at the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, the "Urban Policy Group" that addressed the theme of the EOB. The main idea from these reflections is how the decentralization in Bogotá has been characterized based on the EOB, in relation to elements from different models allowing defining it as the result from a hybrid process. After a review of the EOB historic background in order to understand its origin, and, having explored the debates in the Constitutional Assembly in order to explain the different trends that inspired and brought it into existence as well as the political context back then, this paper provides a design of the decentralization in Bogotá and its particularities. This way, the characterization of the decentralization model in Bogotá is described as a hybrid process between the decentralization, deconcentration and delegation that sometimes favors the decentralization economic model and, sometimes, the political model. The final reflections lead to think that instead of "becoming blurred and/or modified" due to the effect of the planning and management devices that appeared later, it is the particularities of the "decentralization model adopted in the EOB" --i.e., its largely hybrid nature-- that allow understanding what happens when going from the guidelines produced by the city central administration to the formulation and implementation of the projects. This fact requires encouraging a more fluent dialogue between the central administration and the local districts to strengthen the spaces where the citizen's voice is present as a valid speaker. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to approach the theory and practice of neoliberalism from a Political Discourse Analysis perspective. In the first part, it analyzes the main debates and controversies surrounding the theoretical, ontological and axiological characteristics of neoliberalism, and its applications at the state level. In the second part, he examines the methodological problems of rigorously investigating the phenomenon of neoliberalism, which are linked to the ambiguous and pragmatic character of the neoliberal theoretical body, the various stages, rhythms, degrees of depth and intensities of state neoliberalization, and the tensions and contradictions between neoliberal theory and its historical applications. In the last part, it offers a complex conceptualization and proposes some analytical operations to contribute to investigate neoliberalism and its ontic uses at the state level, through the tools of Political Discourse theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with financialization, a concept that critically describes the rise and expansion of financial capital in the economy and its social and political implications. Seen from the perspective of financialization, the Colombian pension system of Law 100 of 1993 (Congress of the Republic of Colombia, 1993) illustrates the expansion of financial capital in emerging or peripheral economies, highlighting the inferior and subordinate status of these countries with respect to the more developed economies. In these countries, the adoption of private pension funds goes hand in hand with financial liberalization and the search to expand their capital markets. Moreover, pension systems have never been far removed from economic structures; they have been created and developed within them. In Colombia, as a country whose industry did not fully awaken, the necessary conditions for the most guaranteeing pension models could not be met. Although the current Colombian model is not purely controlled by private funds, the link between these funds and the financial players is so strong that there is still unresolved tension around the complete privatization of the system. In addition, the institutional formula through which it is evident that this is a financialized system is the so-called multi-fund pension scheme. Thus, under the magnifying glass of the financialization that has governed the current pension system and its most recent changes, we can also read the announcements and reform proposals put forward by the government, unions and think tanks at the end of neoliberalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes the ethical foundations of a universal, individual and unconditional basic income, and its transformative potential in the world of work and social policy. Guaranteeing a right to existence, as the materialization of a normative ideal of real freedom, implies overcoming the contributory principle and promoting a situation of full voluntary employment. The combination of both aspects could lead to the emergence of a socioeconomic order that transcends the compensatory connotations of contemporary social policy and goes beyond the scope of the conservative, liberal and social democratic models of the welfare state. The paper presents the discussions around basic income in the field of the theories of justice as distribution, analyzes the idea of "work as an asset" and shows the myths that support the validity of the contributory principle. Throughout these reflections, the main criticisms of basic income from liberal, trade union, feminist, communist and republican perspectives will also be presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explains why Chile's foreign policy, since the return to democracy in 1990, maintained and deepened the economicist character established during the authoritarian predecessor regime. It is argued that, in addition to structural factors linked to globalization, neoliberalism and interdependence, there are domestic elements linked to the transition and its political dynamics that had an impact on the actors that shaped it. Despite being a case study, the article emphasizes the general debate on the mutual constitution between agents and structures to explain foreign policy, considering the role of the actors in a framework of external and domestic transformations. To this end, the case of former members of the Joint Study Program on Latin American International Relations (RIAL), academics who, after the return to democracy, assumed political positions, is analyzed. The renewal of the ideas of these actors, who assumed the new international practices and accepted the domestic political dynamics, contributed to the continuity of the economic pragmatism of foreign policy initiated by the dictatorship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Throughout the last 15 years, Colombian migrations experimented a massive geographical expansion without precedents. Within Latin America, Argentina stands out as the main destination, and therefore, the main objective of this paper is to analyze the origins and evolution of Colombian migrations to Argentina. Resorting to statistical and ethnographical elements, the paper shows the new migratory patterns of Colombian population to Argentina, even though the current migratory trend towards this country is descending. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

May 68 has been characterized and interpreted in many ways. In this paper I provide an account of three characterizations among the most important: a political crisis; a psycho-drama and a carnival; and a crisis of civilization. I also provide the reasons making me thinking that Raymond Aron is right in most of his contentions about what happened 50 years ago. I also explain the reasons why the May 68 legacy would impossible to claim. However, I contend that the anti-hierarchical criticism by the Parisian students must be taken more seriously. To do so, I make some reflections on the arguments by neuroscientist Henri Laborit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the behavior of inequality in the distribution of family income under the different macroeconomic regimes in force during the last four decades in Argentina. It also evaluates the factors explaining the changes thereof. This work examines the hypothesis that during the said decades an inequality matrix associated with a persistent structural heterogeneity in the social-occupational systems would have been established, even though if there was a context of active distributive policies. To prove this hypothesis, a model is developed to decompose the Gini coefficient, distinguishing the income contribution to the family-income inequality by different economic sectors. The information is gathered by using the Household Permanent Survey of the Argentinian National Institute for Statistics and Census, specifically, the one applied to the Great Buenos Aires as it was the only one having complete information for the study term. The findings reveal that the highest distributive inequality is explained with a higher inequity in labor earnings, higher concentration of income by the most upgraded economic sectors and the impoverishment of the low-productivity sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides an analysis of the concept Populism and how it relates to the violence in Colombia during the 20th-century last three decades and the 21st-century first decade, putting special emphasis on the pioneer work by historian Marco Palacios. We explore the idea that the conceptualization of populism in Colombia develops concurrently, on one hand, with the dispute around the notion of violence in the 20th-century second half and, on the other hand, with the idea that the "incomplete populism" was a causal explanation to the times of the bloody armed fights in Colombia. In addition, these events have made the Colombian political case instilled with an idea of exceptionality as compared to the other countries of Latin America. To do this work, we gathered some theoretical contributions from the conceptual history by Reinhart Koselleck and from the history of political languages by Elías Palti. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I examine the connections between the hogging of lands, the oil palm tree cultivations, and the para-militarism in Colombia through the lens of the primitive accumulation. To do so, I analyze three concrete cases: the Bajo Atrato en Chocó [a river basin], Mapiripán in Meta Province, and Las Pavas in the South Bolívar Province. These three Colombian locations have undergone violent events including forced displacement and land deprivation, with subsequent projects for growing oil palm trees on a broad scale. The discussion brings into contention the agricultural biofuel international market and the need by the Colombian State to take some territories that were previously hostile. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a historic essay about the 3rd Congress of the Cuban Communist Party in 1986 developed as an analysis of the international context and the discourses by Fidel Castro and Raúl Castro in the party plenary sessions. This work is justified on the basis of a need to understand the nature of the political changes by the Cuban government in the latest years of the Cold War. This era was marked by the economic precariousness and the geopolitical transitions in Latin America. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main purposes of this paper are to explore the state of implementation of the Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) Programmes and their contribution to the construction of integrated social protection systems in Latin America on one hand, and to discuss the most important achievements and challenges in fighting against poverty in Colombia. With this target, the article begins with a brief review of the overall situation of the CCT Programmes in Latin America. This is followed by a comparative analysis of actions undertaken in some countries in the region in order to face the main threats related to the public policies to eradicate poverty. It enables to draw an analysis about the management of such challenges in Colombia. Finally, the last part of the paper suggests some hypotheses and proposals in order to address the problems identified above. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a first instance, the following article proposes an analytical itinerary around three "cursed" words (violence, populism and Gaitanism) of the Colombian historiography. In a second instance, an inquiry is suggested over those categories and over their own digressions under the light of a non-pejorative interpretation of both populism and Gaitanism. Finally, the article exhibits an exploratory hypothesis and argues that Gaitanist populism could be thought of as a particular way of processing and stopping political violence. To illustrate this proposition two specific dimensions are described to understand the Gaitanist process between 1924 and 1948: its political-comunicative practices and the oscillations between rupture and integration in the Gaitanist discursivity. By analyzing Gaitán and his followers' discursivity, we can consider that Gaitanism, as a framework of political-communicative practices, contributed to process popular demands that diminished bipartisan tensions in Colombia in the first half of the 20th century. The construction of a popular subject, and the "face to face" presentation between the leadership and the masses in the public arena, among other elements of the Gaitanist identity, served to process --in a belligerent but peaceful way-- the political and social discontent of the time. Likewise, Gaitanism as an identity process --between 1944 and 1946-- raised as a movement that arrogated the representation of a "true country" (rupture) and the construction of a restoring order for Colombian democracy (integration). In short, the proposed disquisitions in this paper seek to highlight the relevance of thinking historical processes, such as populism, through a conceptual framework aimed at the study of political identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this article is to illustrate how, from an extended ritual device, social forces changed in the postapartheid South Africa, helping reconciliation and the consolidation of national unity. In addition, the paper studies how the story-telling of this device creates a foundational myth: the Rainbow Nation. This article is the research result of the Line "History, Culture and Political Philosophy" at the Faculty of Political Science and Government at the University of Rosario. It presents a political phenomenon, almost religious, departing from concepts and theories of the anthropologists Marc Augé and Mircea Eliade. Based on secondary sources (videos, interviews, books, academic researches), the article showed how a sports event was applied as a ritual, which consolidated the social bases of the new political project of the South Africa postapartheid; and how from this ritual, a myth was built, a historical reference for the new nation. The article has an original approach insofar as it links anthropological concepts to analyze a political process; and illustrates the functioning and usefulness of rituals and myths in contemporaneity as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public choice theorists argue that political and administrative decentralization increases the efficiency in the delivery of public services in local communities. This paper departs from a critical stand of this perspective in studying the phenomenon of poor school performance. The Department of Atlántico is a case that deviates from the assumptions of public choice scholars, and hence its analysis serves to open an ontological and practical discussion on how to study processes of primary and secondary educational decentralization in Colombia. The use of a realist paradigm as a methodological backup to analyse a set of individual and group interviews at different levels of the government helps to unveil many of these implications. Themes identified in this study include the limited capacity of local authorities to design and administrate educational policies, the lack of clarity among the actors of different levels of the national education system about the use of state examinations, and the difficulty experienced by school directors of public educational institutions to access promptly to educational quality resources. These findings are all indicative of policy complexities omitted in the diagnostics of the sector published in the mainstream literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Both the Pacific Alliance (PA) and the Common Market of the South (Mercosur) are economic regional integration agreements whose constitutive principles conform to the so-called open regionalism. However, when the AP was launched in 2011, with the Declaration of Lima, Mercosur had distanced from economic liberalism, and its political agenda, which had acquired especial relevance, led it to clashes with the United States. Some analysts came to speak of a confrontation between the efficient liberalizers of the PA and the inefficient statists of Mercosur. In this paper, I analyze both regional agreements. The research, based on documentary sources and statistics, aims to evaluate the ability of these two bodies to promote economic development through regional integration, an objective proposed in its constituent documents. The main conclusion is that AP is better prepared to achieve the proposed objective because of its commitment to deep integration and trade of global value chains. Another concluding remark is that political and ideological confrontation have become a disturbing element in the performance of Mercosur. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on a sui generis peacebuilding experience in Colombia -- the Magdalena Medio Peace and Development Programme (PDPMM). Its main purpose is to assess the extent that the PDPMM stands as a true 'peace laboratory' and paves new roads and alternative 'formulas' for peace at local and regional level, which could be replicated in other regions of the country, in a potential post-conflict scenario in Colombia. One conjectures that the PDPMM represents a valid and consolidated positive peacebuilding model at the regional level, from which various lessons can be learned, in order to build a sustainable and lasting peace in Colombia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is part of the Master's thesis in Social Policy "Female Stray Bodies: To a social construction of gender policy in Bogotá" like a result of my own work experience as a young state official of the Protection of Children and youth District Institute (or IDIPRON initials in spanish). During the research process we attempted to construct knowledge from the experience of those who were involved in the problem of study, questioning the construction of sexualities and gender in street contexts as well as the government response that support roles and gender stereotypes in District's social service programs, aimed at children and youth inhabitant of / in street. The purpose of the paper is to present the conceptual and methodological route for the construction of a new category: stray female bodies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]