Search

A literary criticism of the book "Calibán," by Roberto Fernández Retamar is presented. Topics discussed include argumentation and construction, American intelligence of José Martí and the role of Caliban in Caribbean and the U.S. It also mentions the role of Cuba in Latin American politics.

The article discusses U.S. foreign policy toward Latin America in the early 21st century in historical perspective. The author intersperses observations about Latin American politics, economic conditions, and international assertiveness with anecdotes about alleged American imperialism in the region from the Monroe doctrine onwards. Aspects of the relationships discussed include the effect of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on American security policy, Latin America's growing geopolitical importance due to its raw materials and natural resources, and the question whether the term Latin America is appropriate to describe the region.

The Eisenhower Administration claimed a diplomatic triumph-and a mandate to overthrow the elected government of Guatemala-after the Tenth Inter-American Conference held in Caracas, Venezuela, in March 1954, when 17 nations voted for an American resolution condemning international Communism. This article disputes the official story and some recent scholarly depictions of the conference. Caracas was the scene of intense Latin American opposition to the American agenda. Vote-buying was rampant as Washington made hundreds of millions of dollars worth of concessions to individual countries. Nonetheless, amendments pushed through by Latin American diplomats transformed the interventionist American resolution into a strong statement against intervention. The American 'triumph' was actually a fiasco that called into sharp relief the difference between United States and Latin American understandings of the inter-American system, demonstrating Latin American diplomatic resistance to intervention and the limits of diplomacy's potential to constrain the actions of the most powerful American state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article takes a two-step approach to improving our understanding of how US foreign policy signals affect the likelihood of coups in Latin America. First, a large body of qualitative literature has developed a ‘conventional wisdom’ on this subject, suggesting that pressure from the USA plays a key role in stabilizing favored leaders and destabilizing unfavored leaders. Meanwhile, quantitative scholarship analyzing coups focuses almost exclusively on intrastate factors. The first step brings these two bodies of work together by providing quantitative evidence that hostile US signals increase the likelihood of coups, while supportive signals have a stabilizing effect. The second step moves beyond the conventional wisdom by (1) reconsidering theoretical assumptions within the conventional argument and (2) identifying anomalies within the preliminary empirical analyses. These efforts reveal several factors that are likely to impact how coup plotters respond to US signals. Among these factors, empirical analyses indicate that US signals are particularly important when economic dependence on the USA increases, during the middle of a US president’s term in office, when they have moderate levels of consistency, and when they specifically mention the military. Overall, the first stage of this article provides a robust confirmation of the conventional wisdom, while the second stage moves the literature down a path that is largely unexplored by previous work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the political challenges faced by Honduras which started when Honduran President Manuel Zelaya was removed from his post. It says that Zelaya's removal was due to his insistence on violating the Honduran Constitution, which is to remove the one-term limit of presidency. It mentions the importance of nations such as Venezuela and the U.S. in the country's crisis. It adds that the Venezuelan domestic challenges demonstrated the demise of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez' influence in Latin America. It also mentions that the U.S. successfully ended the Honduran political crisis after Undersecretary Thomas Shannon carried out the negotiations. It concludes that Latin America emerged from the crisis as a mature political region.

Latin America was a testing ground of neoliberalism over three decades, and part of the political agenda promoted jointly by the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and the Treasury of the United States government, as thereafter was called "Washington Consensus", a paradigm adopted by governments strongly authoritarian or dictatorial also governments of democracy, and accompanied by the slogan of the end of the state. The metaphor of the state "going" or "come" can not allowed to see the changes in goals and styles of state action always respond to changes in power relations between social actors and the effectiveness of the political. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Giovanni Sartori's essay "Where is Political Science Going?" has generated an important polemic. In this context, this article deals with theoretical and methodological aspects of contemporary political science, especially the discussion in the Latin-American field. This article argues that a restricted vision of the "science" and of the "politics" (forgetting the "political") has led North American political science to a crisis. Nevertheless, this situation is not a tragedy for the study of politics in Latin America, but an opportunity to check research methods and to overcome the current limits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The essay aims to identify the foreign policy models that have predominated in Latin America in recent years, placing particular emphasis on the decade of the 1990s. Based on a series of premises, trends and conditions, the author examines the region's strategic options as compared to the United States. The text highlights three alternatives available to Latin American countries, and which could shape links with Washington in the future. These take the form of a series of specific issues and problems that interconnect the United States with Latin America. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper examines the nationalization of electoral change in multiparty settings. We present a method to measure the relative magnitude of national and sub-national shifts in electoral support across parties and elections that is appropriate for the compositional structure of multiparty electoral data. We apply this new method to the analysis of legislative elections in six Latin American countries and the United States. Our findings indicate the widespread influence of local (i.e., state-specific) factors in electoral change, but highlight the drastic impact that intermittent nationalized shifts have on partisan support. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

On the light of 200 years of the next "celebration" of the independence processes of Latinamerica, it is due to write an analytical study of the main socioeconomic and political- legal topics of the agenda United States-Latinamerica. Political competition for the Presidency of the United States has provoked emergence of the more relevant topics of/his agenda, being noticed differences between democratic and republican Candidates, and the different vision of the United States and Latinamerica of their controversial relations. Under this optic this research review some of the main topics like: neoliberalism and levels of urban violence; neoliberalism as a civil war against civil population; the crisis of the Welfare State and the growth of the "Estado de Malestar "; the corporative control of the radioelectric field; latinamerican integration and the "Latinamerican Wall" or "Berlin Wall of Latinamerica "; global warming in Latinamerica; Latinamerican participation in the direction of international organizations; emigration as the best (or only?) life alternative; one thousand 404 local migratory regulations because of the absence of a federal law; the polemic "celebration" of/he 200 independence years of Latinamerica; and finally review of other points of the agenda for the XXI century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we examine the national security issues resulting from environmental transformation and demographic change in Latin America. We note a lack of consensus in the literature as to what constitutes environmental change, security, and its corresponding impact on national security. If environmental degradation and the national security of Latin American countries are linked, then policy makers must take these linkages into account when formulating economic and social policy. Omitting these factors from national security strategy discussions may overstate the risks associated with other threats and lead to a biased allocation of public resources. On the other hand, if these threats are overstated (or non-existent), then incorporating them into national security discussions may divert attention and resources from issues of importance. Given the relatively fragile nature of many of the Latin American economies, accurately addressing these threats is imperative for economic and social stability and security. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista de Sociologia e Política is the property of Revista de Sociologia e Politica and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article looks at Latin America's political shift over the last several years. The author argues that these changes have largely been misunderstood and underestimated in the United States for a number of reasons. First, Latin America's unprecedented growth failure over the past 25 years is a major cause of these political changes and has not been well-understood. Second, the collapse of the International Monetary Fund's influence in Latin America, and in middle-income countries, is an epoch-making change. Third, the availability of alternative sources of finance, especially from the reserves of the Venezuelan government, has become very important. Finally, the increasing assertion of national control over natural resources is an important part of the new relationship between Latin America and the United States. For these and other reasons, the relationship between Latin America and the United States has undergone a fundamental and possibly irreversible change, and one that opens the way to new and mostly more successful economic policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, numerous Latin–American countries have carried out reforms in their public accounting systems, with technical cooperation provided by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Taking into account the lack of international accounting standards for the public sector, USAID has designed a model termed Integrated Financial Management System for Latin America and the Caribbean (IFMS or SIMAFAL). This model is intended to provide better financial information for governmental decision-taking as regards the allocation of resources; a further goal is to achieve greater transparency and for a higher degree of responsibility to be accepted for the commitments made and the results of activities undertaken. Important changes are currently taking place on the international public accounting scene and the International Federation of Accountants (IFAC) is pressing for the adoption of a set of international public accounting standards by Latin–American countries. In this article, we compare the level of information included in the year-end governmental public report in Latin–American countries which have carried out their reforms outside SIMAFAL with that of others which have followed this model. Second, we examine the extent to which the public financial reporting practices recommended by IFAC coincide with those adopted by the above countries. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article deals with the establishment of U.S. democracy promotion programs in Latin America. It traces the history of U.S. intervention in Latin America. In the Western Hemisphere, it has been resistance that has led to both the democratization of social relations and the liberalization of the inter-state system. The inter-American system that emerged from the Good Neighbor Policy provided the model used by U.S. diplomats in their construction of a multilateral regional alliance system.

The article discusses the U.S. electoral intervention in the Latin America and its dramatic rebirth during the Cold War. U.S. electoral intervention has a long history in the Americas. In the first quarter of the 20th century, the U.S. government considered as imperial behavior in the American Mediterranean to be benign in its intentions and effects, even if it was generally designed to protect U.S. military, political or economic interests.

The article examines the constitutionalism in Latin America and compares it with that in the United States. Somewhere in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the United States and the nations of Latin America became independent. The formation of constitutions in Latin America led to oligarchy and dictatorship because of the failure of aggressive implementation of constitutional rules. The constitutional provisions in the country can be easily changed or ignored. The Latin American Constitution fails to define the distribution of political power in the country.

Examines the the use of discursive resources by the United States in forging alliances with Latin American countries. Analysis on the meaning of development and democracy within the context of political economy in Latin America; Foreign economic policies of the United States toward Latin America.

An essay is presented on democratic revolutions in the United States and other countries. It discusses events that exemplified a democratic retreat in Latin America and other parts of the world including Portugal, Philippines, and Africa. The author suggests that it is the people in the developing countries who will determine whether democratic systems will be formed.

Discourse helped structure relations between the United States and Latin America between 1945 and 1948. The US's new global supremacy changed how it acted towards Latin America. It changed the way US officials picked their interlocutors and it changed US perception of Latin American interests and priorities. US hegemony determined the new forms of relationships the US would establish in the postwar era. The change can be observed by considering three of the most important places where 'communication' took place between the two interlocutors, the US and the Latin American governments: the conferences in Chapultepec (1945), Rio de Janeiro (1947) and Bogota (1948). Ultimately, democratic tendencies in Latin America were frustrated by the new development in inter-American relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author comments on the process of introducing a U.S.-promoted version of democracy in Latin America. He argues that the process has created new political circumstances in which a new meaning of democracy can enter the realm of real politics, not as a mere institutional arrangement trapped by built-in inertia, but as a political process of continuous change. He cites the challenges facing progressive forces in the search for a new democratic manifesto.

The author considers the promotion of democracy in Latin America by the U.S. He believes that here is a contradiction in a foreign policy that promotes polyarchy while simultaneously undermining any social democracy that respects the rules of polyarchy. He explains the definitions of polyarchy and democracy. He claims that U.S. efforts to promote polyarchy or broader democracy abroad will be handicapped until the U.S. recovers its credibility.

A panoramic view on Public Policy past and future is developed. After a critical analysis of Public Policy discipline American foundation and its Latin American reception, the question on balance and between technical and political considerations in policy -- decision making is addressed, leading to pose the question on the concept of governmental or public effectiveness. A new concept of public effectiveness is proposed, which goes beyond the technical reason and involves political components as well. The article ends pointing out that the new governance structure and process will modify some methods and practices of conventional public policy analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]