Ian Shapiro, Contención y cosmopolitismo democrático

The cosmopolitan democrats’ national security policy of choice is containment. Some believe that cosmopolitan democrats should support world government, a view that seems incompatible with endorsing any national security strategy such as containment. The arguments commonly given to support this view are fallacious. Containment shows more elective affinities with the democratic ideal of non-domination than with any existing alternatives. In an era of rogue regimes, weak states and itinerant terrorist threats, effective containment requires legitimization through international institutions and cooperation with other states through regional alliances.

 Pablo Telman Sánchez Ramírez, La Federación Rusa, los Estados Unidos y la Unión Europea, 2006-2008. ¿Un retorno a la Guerra Fría?

During recent years, relations between the Russian Federation, the European countries and the United States have become strained to the point that they have even involved NATO. Opposing positions of Russia and the United States, in the European sphere, are causing confrontation in the region. Russia has gained strength, as oil and gas prices have remained high during recent years and it is trying to recover its position as an independent, global power, not perhaps within a bi-polar, but rather in a multi-polar order of nations.

Divergent interests and goals of the Russian and United States’ governments, concerning a European and global security policy, make the conflict-prevention and peace-keeping environment on the continent even more difficult.  

 Eladio Arroyo Lara, Luis V. Pérez Gil y Cristián Garay Vera, El estatus del terrorismo y la violencia política transnacional en el sistema internacional de la posguerra fría.

In this essay, the authors analyze the position terrorism has attained among the threats to security in the post-Cold War period. Hegemony in an interdependent world has made the concept of all violent conflicts obsolete, either between states with equally high levels of development or developing states, but it has also enabled barely significant groups to threat the security of everyone. These groups make use of violent actions to cause damage indiscriminately in order to get the attention of the media, thereby increasing the repercussions and scope of their actions. Consequently, international terrorism is now considered a violent political phenomenon characteristic of this new stage.

 Alicia Puyana y José Romero, Reflexiones sobre una unión monetaria de México con Estados Unidos

The theory of monetary union is analyzed in relation to a small, open economy closely linked to a larger, more stable one. In particular, from the perspective of Mexico, and in case it should decide to create a monetary union with the United States. This analysis is carried out in terms of economic and political feasibility, following the example of the European common currency (Euro), within the nafta framework. Additionally, the Canadian position on the subject is also discussed.

Carlos Sola Ayape, El significado de los Pactos de la Moncloa en el ideario político de la transición democrática mexicana

The Mexican presidential elections of July, 2000, resulted in the National Action Party (PAN) candidate, Vicente Fox's historic victory. After seven decades heading the federal executive, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) lost control of Los Pinos (the presidency), a position it did not regain in the 2006 electoral process. Coinciding with the turn of the Century, this electoral context featured -amidst other aspects- the incorporation into Mexican political thought, the concept that guaranteed the Spanish success in its democratic transition: the October 1977 Moncloa Pacts. Its deplorable use finally resulted in the concept being stolen by political merchandising, purported to be for reinforcing the idea of change. While in Mexico the so-called Agreements of Chapultepec –a Mexican version of the Moncloa Pacts- were signed in October of 2001, these very soon ended up as dead letters, for they lacked really clear contents, revealing the incapability of the then political forces to develop a consensus-based culture enabling it to face the enormous challenges that living in a real -rather than a formal- democracy poses.

 Ugo Pipitone, India vieja y nueva (instituciones, descentralización, empleo).

From the early nineties, India’s economic growth has accelerated, revealing several critical aspects, from the persistent consequences of an agrarian reform implemented without considering the quality of its institutions or the dynamic links between computer science and the domestic market, to the excessive weight services have had in the economy’s long-term reactivation. Ancient tasks -overcoming secular caste segmentation in the people’s conscience- mixed with more recent ones, such as creating a dozen million jobs a year for the next decades, in order to ensure the social stability that its economic growth requires.

 Laura Rubio, Una reevaluación del proyecto de nación del gobierno tibetano en el exilio

This paper analyzes the relation between forced displacement and exile, with the rising of several nationalist discourses in Tibetan refugee communities in Southern Asia. Focusing on the discourse of the Tibetan Government in exile and the fourteenth Dalai Lama -spiritual and political leader of the refugees- the author examines the different ways in which the power concept articulates in the struggle for political representation, and the several forms in which cultural and political legitimacy is contested and negotiated in force-displaced communities. This research reveals the difficulties of speaking about a pan-national project from an exile context.

 Alejandro Álvarez Martínez, Liderazgo carismático y proceso sociopolítico en Haití (1986-2004): el caso de Jean Bertrand Aristide