Discurso de investidura como Doctor Honoris Causa del Profesor Doctor D. Stéphane Dion

Nombrado Doctor Honoris Causa el día 13 de noviembre de 200

Haute fonction publique et changement de gouvernement au Québec : Le cas des sous-ministres en titre (1976-1989)

On peut distinguer deux types de haut fonctionnaire : premièrement, le grand commis haut fonctionnaire de carrière sans allégeance partisane et deuxièmement, l’outsider politique qui est recruté à l’extérieur de la fonction publique en fonction de son appartenance partisane. Le premier sert indifféremment tous les gouvernements, le second abandonne son poste avec le gouvernement qui l’a nommé. Lequel de ces deux modèles décrit le mieux le sous-ministre en titre du gouvernement du Québec? L’article répond à la question en examinant en quoi le profil des sous-ministres a été affecté par les changements de gouvernement de 1976 et 1985. Il apparaît que, tant sous les Péquistes que sous les Libéraux, les sous-ministres québécois ont été des grands commis « fragiles ». La plupart étaient des hauts fonctionnaires de carrière formellement apolitiques, mais très peu sont parvenus à demeurer en poste à la suite du changement de gouvernement

Climate action beyond the Paris Accord

in this paper we propose to shift climate negotiations from the current logic of quantity to a logic of price. Our proposal brings together the logic of science-based efficiency and the logic of ethics-based justice. A carbon budget set to the two-degree limit leads to the establishment of a differentiated trajectory of gradually converging global pricing of carbon, each country freely determining the mix of instruments used to raise its price. Furthermore, our carbon price system addresses inequalities between countries (through modulations and compensations) and inequalities within countries (accelerating adaptation of financing

La democracia y los derechos universales frente al auge del populismo | Democracy and universal rights against the rise of populism

Democracy and universal rights against the rise of populism Opening speech at the International Congress for the 70th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Human Rights Institute of the University of Valencia. From December 10 to 12, 2018, Valencia, Spai

Syndicats et politique au niveau municipal en France

Sur la base d'une enquête menée en 1981 dans cinq municipalités d'union de la gauche situées dans la banlieue «rouge» de Paris, l'auteur examine le comportement d'une section cégétiste d'employés municipaux face à un maire communiste, comment la CGT agissait-elle dans une municipalité socialiste et comment réagit la CFDTUnions in France proclaim their independence vis-à-vis political parties, according to the «anarcho-syndicalist» tradition. In fact, the communist affiliation of the most important French union, — la Confederation generale du travail (CGT) — is well known. The «Confederation française democratique du travail» (CFDT) and the Socialist Party are in a paradoxical situation being both allied and in competition as the two main organisations of the non-communist left. The third union — Force ouvrière (FO) — claims to be apolitical but is largely assimilated to the «rightist» forces. It is easy to imagine what the unusual features of the relations will be between the unions and the employers in municipalities governed by leftist parties. What will be the attitude of a CGT section towards a communist mayor? How will the CGT function in a socialist municipality? What will the behaviour of the CFDT be? Will the FO be able to rally rightist opponents in the leftist municipalities? The author answers these questions with the help of an inquiry completed in 1981 in five leftist municipalities of the Parisian area — a crucial time in French political life. All eleven union sections in the five municipalities are carefully studied. They include: two CGT sections acting in two municipalities dominated by the Communist Party, three CGT sections, three CFDT sections and three of the FO acting in three municipalities dominated by the Socialist Party. In a difficult context for trade union action, the behaviour of these eleven sections varies in terms of the political factor. In the communist municipalities, the CGT sections play a role of politicizing the municipal administration in two different ways: first, the CGT attempts to mobilize municipal employees with slogans of the Communist Party; second, the CGT helps the communist municipal officiais to regulate labour relations and anticipate conflicts with the personnel. The CGT takes the opposite attitude in the socialist municipalities where it is also playing a role of politicizing the municipal administration, but this time politicization is directed against the employer. Until the 1981 national Spring elections, this local struggle was closely linked to the strong rivalry between the Socialist Party and the Communist Party at the national level. There is clear evidence of the communist affiliation of the CGT. Its sections put pressure on socialist municipalities until the presidential election was held, and stopped abruptly after the nomination of communist ministers to the Mauroy Government. The CFDT sections hesitate about the strategies they should choose. They are divided between the fear of being swayed by the CGT and the desire to «prove» they are not aligned with the employer (the socialist mayor), with whom they share some political links. As for the FO sections, they do not play any significant role and are not able to rally the employees with rightist sympathies. The author concludes that politicization of the unions, when it occurs in medium or small public organizations, such as the five municipalities studied, has weaker effects than expected. Thus, the CGT sections failed to massively involve municipal employees in those struggles where the political character was too evident. As in the case of any other union, the CGT needs to be sustained by its members and, in communist as well as in socialist municipalities, it had some difficulties in adjusting necessity and political strategies. On a more theoretical basis, the author provides a typology of the different union requests in terms of the degree of politicization. He identifies four types of criticisms that unions might direct to the employer when he has a political coloration: administrative criticism— questions about only the hierarchical administrative authority; institutional criticism —directly involving the employer, but keeping the debate strictly on labour relations questions; political criticism —extending the debate to any policies initiated by the employer, judging them and describing them as the source of the employees difficulties; radical criticismdenouncing the employer for sharing interests and ideologies fundamentally opposed to the interest of the workers

Response to somatic cell count-based selection for mastitis resistance in a divergent selection experiment in sheep

A divergent selection experiment in sheep was implemented to study the consequences of log-transformed somatic cell score (SCS)-based selection on resistance to natural intramammary infections. Using dams and progeny-tested rams selected for extreme breeding values for SCS, we created 2 groups of ewes with a strong divergence in SCS of approximately 3 genetic standard deviations. A survey of 84 first-lactation ewes of both the High and Low SCS lines indicated favorable responses to SCS-based selection on resistance to both clinical and subclinical mastitis. All clinical cases (n = 5) occurred in the High SCS line. Additionally, the frequency of chronic clinical mastitis,as detected by the presence of parenchymal abscesses, was much greater in the High SCS line (n = 21) than in the Low SCS line (n = 1). According to monthly milk bacterio-logical examinations of udder halves, the prevalence of infection was significantly greater (odds ratio = 3.1) in the High SCS line than in the Low SCS line, with predicted probabilities of 37 and 16%, respectively. The most frequently isolated bacteria responsible for mastitis were staphylococci: Staphylococcus auricularis(42.6% of positive samples), Staphylococcus simulans, Staphylococcus haemoliticus, Staphylococcus xylosus, Staphylococcus chromogenes, Staphylococcus lentus, Staphylococcus warneri, and Staphylococcus aureus. The incidence of positive bacteriology was greater in the High SCS line (39%) than in the Low SCS line (12%)at lambing, indicating that High SCS line ewes were especially susceptible to postpartum subclinical mastitis. Negativation of bacteriological results from one sampling time point to the next was markedly different between lines after weaning (e.g., 41 and 84% in the High and Low SCS lines, respectively). This result was consistent with differences in the duration of infection, which was much greater in the High SCS line compared with the Low SCS line. Finally, ewes from the High SCS line consistently had greater SCS in positive milk samples than did ewes from the Low SCS line (+2.04 SCS, on average), with an especially large difference between lines during the suckling period (+3.42 SCS). Altogether, the preliminary results suggest that the better resistance of Low SCS line ewes, compared with High SCS line ewes, was principally characterized by a better ability to limit infections during the peripartum period, to eliminate infections during lactation, and quantitatively to limit the inflammation process and its clinical consequences

Social contagion and high school dropout : the role of friends, romantic partners, and siblings

Social contagion theories suggest that adolescents in relationships with same-age high school dropouts should be at a greater risk of dropping out themselves. Yet, few studies have examined this premise, and none have considered all potentially influential same-age intimates, focusing instead on only either friends or siblings. Moreover, a key influence in adolescents’ social worlds, romantic partners, has been ignored. The goal of this study was to provide a comprehensive view of dropout contagion by considering occurrences of dropout among friends, siblings, and romantic partners. Data came from a sample of Canadian adolescents (N = 545) comprising one third of high school dropouts; a second third of carefully matched at-risk but persevering schoolmates; and a last third of average, not-at-risk students. As predicted, adolescents were at greater risk of dropping out when a member of their network had recently left school (i.e., in the past year, OR = 3.11; 95% CI [1.78, 6.27]), with independent associations of nontrivial sizes for occurrences of dropout among friends, romantic partners, and siblings (ORs between 1.97 [95% CI 1.25, 3.41] and 3.12 [95% CI 1.23, 11.0]). Moreover, adolescents seemed particularly at risk of quitting school (OR = 4.88; 95% CI [2.54, 12.5]) when their networks included more than one type of same-age intimate (e.g., a friend and a sibling) who had recently dropped out. Findings suggest that social contagion of dropout is a pervasive phenomenon in low-income schools and that prevention programs should target adolescents with same-age intimates who have recently left school