Política. Revista de Ciencia Política

Citizenship, Public Sphere, and Sexual and Reproductive Rights: Debates and Contributions of Feminist Political Theory

Romina Accossatto — 2024-12-26

This paper aims to explore the contributions of feminist political theory to the debates on the social contract, citizenship, and the public-private dichotomy within the context of the emergence of sexual and reproductive rights as public issues. It revisits contributions that challenge the classical principles underlying the public-private dichotomy, while also providing conceptual tools intended to reconfigure the ideas of citizenship, the public sphere, and political agency.

A Political Opportunity: The Build-Up of the Colombian Campaign against ‘Gender Ideology’ in the 2016 Peace Plebiscite

Angela Maria Bohorquez Oviedo — 2024-12-26

After the 2012-2016 peace process between the Colombian government and the FARC rebels, influential right-wing leaders and anti-gender activists disputed the inclusion of gender equality in the peace agreement. These actors reactivated a national network that portrayed gender as a ‘threat’ to societal morals, and their ideas mobilized people to protest before the plebiscite elections. This article examines how the right-wing network built the campaign against ‘gender ideology’ to contest the peace agreement. Methods include archival creation with materials from anti-gender activists and a Senator, and 24 semi-structured interviews with participants of the peace negotiations and the plebiscite campaigning. Findings revealed that the right-wing network articulated three events as a political opportunity to build the campaign against ‘gender ideology.’

He Reinterpretation of causation in the theories of Waltz, Doyle, and Cox from Milja Kurki’s causal pluralism

Mario Ignacio Cabrera Anguita — 2024-12-26

This research seeks to reinterpret the theories of Waltz, Doyle, and Cox while pointing out the consequences of the concept of causation and its use by these authors. This ontological category has been understood following Hume’s philosophy, which has caused limitations and theoretical difficulties, also expressed in the fourth debate. We will turn to Milja Kurki’s causal pluralism based on critical realism and Aristotle to overcome this obstacle. This causal model makes it possible to reinterpret these three internationalist theories and thus integrate them coherently and systematically under the causal pluralist model.

Municipalities in Uruguay: Perceptions about their circumstances

Alejandro Noboa — 2024-12-26

The article analyzes the progress of the decentralization process in Uruguay through the perceptions of Mayors. It is a qualitative study that used qualitative interviews as the data collection technique. The dimensions analyzed encompass the different facets of municipal life, both internal and external to its functioning. These axes are studied as a way to understand municipal reality and are discussed in light of the most well-known theories on territorial decentralization, one neoliberal and the other neodevelopmentalist. As conclusions, the progress of the process and its limitations are noted along with its most pressing demands: legal personality that grants greater autonomy and the enablement of cross-voting for the election of mayors.

The indigenous question in Rio Negro, Argentine. Tensions and disputes about the comprehensive approach to the problem

Mirian Ruth Maldonado — 2024-12-26

This paper will attempt to analyse the Indigenous Policy of the Province of Rio Negro, Argentine, will focus on the recognition given by the subnational State to the Communities and will explore the tensions that have arisen around the granting of lands, in the framework of the provincial Law N°279 of Lands and Settlements and Law 4744 that creates the Investigating Commission for the Survey of Rural Land Transfers. We ask ourselves whether, in the provincial territory, there really exists an integral treatment of the indigenous problem, within the framework of the Constitutional Reform of 1994, which recognised and established in its articles the ethnic and cultural pre-existence of the native people, and National Law 23.302 on Indigenous Policy and Support for Aboriginal Communities. In order to carry out the article, we will base ourselves on the analysis of the corresponding legislation, the reading of specialised bibliography and we will review what has been published in the provincial press.

Venture capital for bio-entrepreneurship and regional integration: an opportunity for a new symbiosis

Celestina Porras — 2024-12-26

This article discusses the opportunity of regional integration through the bioeconomy in Latin America to promote the development of bioentrepreneurship by attracting venture capital. In this sense, it highlights the importance of the bioeconomy as an avenue for productive diversification. However, it also highlights the challenges faced by bio-entrepreneurs such as the lack of an enabling environment, the informality of business and the difficulty of accessing finance. The article shows the importance of venture capital as a source of support for the development of bio-entrepreneurship and mentions the need for public institutions to foster its growth. It concludes that regional integration in the bioeconomy can be an opportunity to attract venture capital and strengthen the development of bioentrepreneurship.

Civil society, public sphere, and democratization: Reviewing the latin american debate in the era of democratic disconfiguration

Enrique Peruzzotti — 2024-12-26

This article analyzes the paradigm of civil society in the context of deconfigured democracies. The new realities of the political system challenge many assumptions of civil society theory since the concept became a cornerstone of a critical theory of democratization that challenged the dominant paradigm of democratic elitism. This understanding of civil society makes reevaluating the purely electoral understanding of democracy, incorporating the former as a substantial element for the functioning and legitimation of its institutions. In this context, some developments of this theory are described to explore to what extent the proposed understanding of civil society and the public sphere remains valid or requires substantive revision.

Identifying political parties as populist? An approach based on ideal types

Oscar Mazzoleni — 2024-12-26

The article challenges mainstream approaches labeling political parties as populist. In critical times when populism is gaining both relevance and diverse meanings, this issue becomes particularly important. For instance, how should scholars approach parties that adopt populist claims while are not conventionally labeled as populist? To address this issue, the article distinguishes between populism and party-based populism, developing a Weberian framework grounded in the construction of ideal types. Political parties function as ideological associations but are also shaped by various organizational patterns, factional logics, and the differing interests and strategies of individuals and groups within them. Therefore, scholars should emphasize different analytical stages: first, defining party-based populism as an ideal type; second, selecting and analyzing individual parties as complex organizations; and finally, engaging in party labeling. Only through empirical investigation is possible to determine how and to what extent each party corresponds to the populist party ideal type.

The Italian Democratic Disfigurement Between Multipopulism and Depoliticization

Manuel Anselmi — 2024-12-26

Over the past thirty years, Italian democracy has undergone a profound disconfiguration due to two major dynamics: multipopulist transformation and depoliticization. In this article, we aim to describe them, seeking to explain how they have taken hold over time, giving rise to multiple actors that have transformed Italian politics into a direct and unmediated form. The series of populist actors has not only changed political life in Italy but also the democratic mindset of the country and the relationship between society and institutions. Every moment of the country’s political and societal life is now stripped of its fundamental connotations. This phenomenon is called depoliticization and has decisively contributed to the democratic disfiguration of the country. Italian political society has lost many of the fundamental political characteristics of classical representative democracy. This article investigates depoliticization through the analysis of the 2018 and 2022 electoral campaigns.

Confidence in parliament and satisfaction with democracy in Latin America

Cecilia Graciela Rodríguez Balmaceda — 2024-12-26

The aim of this study is to compare the different levels of trust that parliamentary elites in Latin America place in their parliaments, as well as to assess how they have changed over the last 25 years. This period has been characterized by a great diversity of political and economic contexts in the region. Using data provided by the PELA-USAL Project, we analyze the attitudes and opinions of parliamentarians in 16 Latin American countries between 1998 and 2022. The results show a heterogeneous trust in parliaments, as well as variations in the levels of trust according to the different political cycles experienced by the region.

Party switching and limits of political change in the Mexican congress (2018-2024)

Said Hernández Quintana — 2024-12-26

This study examines the impact of legislative party-switching on the reelection prospects of deputies and senators in Mexico during the period 2018-2024. Despite the common perception that changing political affiliation might increase reelection opportunities, results obtained through a binomial logistic regression model suggest otherwise. Party-switching does not significantly affect these probabilities. In contrast, factors such as legislative chamber, position on the electoral formula, and party loyalty are more influential. These findings provide a valuable case study within the Mexican context, illustrating how the political and electoral system shapes legislative behavior and offering new perspectives for understanding this phenomenon in comparative contexts.