The Political Economy of Fiscal Reform: The Case of Colombia, 1986-2006

This paper explores the characteristics of the political economy process that conditioned the scope and success of the combination of fiscal reforms before and after Colombia’s 1991 constitutional reforms. Using formal analysis of reforms and interviews with actors, reforms in taxation, decentralization, the budgetary process and pensions are examined in times of political crisis, economic crisis, and economic boom. The results generally confirm the hypothesis that increased political fragmentation and limited unilateral executive power after the 1991 reforms restricted the extent of reforms, particularly in tax law. Nonetheless, the enactment of piecemeal reforms was encouraged by crisis conditions.Policymaking process, Political economy, Structural reform, Colombia

The Violence of (In)Visibility: Queer Adolescence and Space in Lucia Puenzo’s XXY

First paragraph: XXY (Puenzo, 2007) constitutes a landmark intervention in Latin American queer filmmaking. Arguably, it has opened up, as Tretorola (363) has rightly put it, “a new phase in the representation of sexual difference in Argentine Cinema”. A pioneering piece not only because it was the first movie to put the intersex sexual subject in the cinematic agenda, but also due to a refreshingly positive and complex perspective to sexual diversity and queer childhood/adolescence that was able to attract LGBTI as well as wider audiences, being particularly popular amongst gay audiences (Puenzo, “XXY: Interview”). The movie is about 15-year-old intersex Alex and her parents, who decide to move away from Buenos Aires to the isolated surroundings of a Uruguayan coastal town (Piriápolis) in order to protect her from urban inter- and transphobia. It focuses on five crucial days in which they receive the visit of a family friend doctor who would assess the viability of a surgical intervention to “normalize” Alex as female. Ramiro, the surgeon, comes with his wife Erika and his sensitive 16-year-old son Alvaro. Alvaro bonds with Alex and, after having sex with her, he experiences first hand her closeted intersex condition, along with his own self-discovery of his pleasure of being penetrated. Alex is then assaulted and victimized by a group of teenagers after being outed by her school friend Vando. The spatial configuration of closetedness and the open secret can thus be read as central to the narrative as well as a paramount example of heterotopian space in its ambivalent capacity–I wish to argue–of both enclosure and opening itself up to non-normative encounters with the (queer) other

Reframing the figure of the sexual child/teen in Argentine cinema: Affect, sexuality and agency

Drawing on a detailed analysis of a corpus of three key Argentine post-2000 films in which the figure of the child as a sexual/gendered being is central, this article explores three core affective dimensions of the processes of queer child/teenage relational subjectivation. Firstly, it discusses the queer shameful or injured selves of LGBTIQ children/teens as nevertheless being able to open up new spaces of affective performativity that can potentially challenge gender/sexuality norms and boundaries. Secondly, it addresses early queer antagonism associated with the configurative role of the ‘closet space’. Thirdly, emerging processes of peer solidarity and alliances arising from queerness, and non-heteronormative sexualities more generally, are identified and subjected to a political reading in terms of different forms of relationality, mobility and agency. By examining the verbal as well as the visual dimensions of the referential and affective messages inscribed in these films, the analysis attends to both their articulated and non-articulated meanings.&nbsp

El impacto del petróleo y la minería en el desarrollo regional y local en Colombia.

Este trabajo estudia el impacto de la explotación de hidrocarburos y minerales sobre el desarrollo regional y local reciente en Colombia. Examina si los Departamentos y Municipios productores de hidrocarburos y carbón, y receptores de regalíashan crecido más, o presentan mayores niveles de PIB per cápita, en comparación con los departamentos que no se han beneficiado de éstos recursos. Asimismo, explora si hay diferencias en el comportamiento fiscal entre las regiones receptoras y no receptoras de regalías. En adición, analiza si la disponibilidad de regalías tiene efectos sobre crecimiento y comportamiento fiscal diferentes a los que presenta la disponibilidad de transferencias de recursos nacionales del Sistema General de Participaciones, que constituye otra fuente exógena de recursos para los entes territoriales. Por último, el trabajo presenta alguna evidencia parcial, con estudios de caso, del impacto de la producción minera y las regalías sobre otras variables claves tales como la educación, la salud y la infraestructura pública.Recursos Naturales, Instituciones, Colombia, Regalías, carbón, Petróleo.

The Long Process of Personalisation of Politics: Toward a Genealogy of Mediatization of the Social Bond in France

El proceso de personalización de la política mediatizada tiene una larga historia que excede con creces la relativamente reciente emergencia de los medios digitales y las redes sociales en el siglo XXI. Este artículo propone analizar tal proceso histórico específicamente como lo que me permitiría denominar "una genealogía de la semiosis del contacto y de la proximidad" dentro del discurso político mediatizado. Se rastrean así los orígenes de dicha mediatización de los procesos políticos de personalización en Francia hasta por lo menos principios de la década de los 80, tomando así como hitos fundamentales las transformaciones enunciativas y espaciales introducidas en los noticieros televisivos de TF1 a partir de 1981, la campaña electoral de 1988, la "televisión de la intimidad" de los años 90, la farandulización creciente de la política a partir de la era Sarkozy, y las interfaces digitales entre los medios tradicionales y los usos interactivos de los 'nuevos medios'. Mi argumento principal concluye con la posibilidad, a partir de Internet, de la construcción de espacios 'heterotópicos' (Foucault), potencialmente capaces de articular compromiso afectivo-emocional con ciudadanía política. The process of personalisation of mediatised politics has a long history that is deeply rooted, far back and well beyond the relatively recent emergence of the digital media and the social media of the 21 st century. This article seeks to analyse such historical process, specifically as what I would call 'a genealogy of the semiosis of contact and proximity' within mediatised political discourse. The origins of such mediatisation of political processes of personalisation are thus traced back to the beginning of the 1980s, by highlighting as key milestones the enunciative and spatial transformations introduced in 1981 by the TF1 television news, the 1988 presidential campaign, 1990s ‘television of intimacy’, the growing celebritisation of politics in Sarkozy’s period, and the digital interfaces between traditional media and the interactive uses of the ‘new media’. My main argument concludes with the possibility provided by Internet of creating ‘heterotopic’ spaces (Foucault), potentially capable of articulating affective-emotional commitment with political citizenship

Entre enunciación, desfase y mediatización : pensar de otro modo

Este artículo tiene por objetivo explorar, en la obra de Eliseo Verón, la genealogía y desarrollo histórico de tres conceptos intrínsecamente interconectados-enunciación, mediatización y desfase (décalage)- postulando que el vínculo entre éstos no es causal, sino del orden de la operación político-intelectiva del tornar visible o inteligible algo que antes no estaba dentro del horizonte de lo pensable; es decir, como una relación de 'visibilización' intelectual. A partir de ejemplos tomados de sus estudios sobre fotografía y televisión, este trabajo se concentra en analizar el rol central conferido por las teorías veronianas de la mediatización y del décalage/desfase, tanto al cuerpo significante como a la enunciación entendidos estos como procesos y operaciones semióticas.This article seeks to explore the genealogy and historical development of three intrinsically interconnected concepts within Eliseo Veron's oeuvre - enunciation, mediatization and décalage (semiotic gap or constitutive lag in meaning-making processes). It is claimed that the relation between them is not causal but politico-intellective, insofar as it brings into the horizon of intelligibility what otherwise would have remained unthinkable or historically 'invisible'. It thus poses a relationship of "visibilization": processes of mediatization render intellectually visible and thinkable something that had hitherto been unintelligible, i.e. meaning as décalage (meaning as radical out-of-jointness between production and recognition/reception of discourses). By using examples from Verón's research work on photography and television, this paper focuses on analyzing the central roles that both enunciation and the signifying body play in his theories of mediatization and of décalage

Entre lo innombrable y lo enunciable : visibilidades y espacialidades LGBT en el cine argentino (1960-1991)

Dentro del horizonte teórico-político de las visibilidades LGBT entendidas como articulaciones complejas entre dos campos socio-semióticos - el de los discursos sociales y el campo visual del cine argentino - este trabajo se concentra en analizar el segundo de ellos a partir de un corpus de filmes de contenido LGBT producidos entre 1960 y 1991. El artículo parte de una discusión sobre la significancia del estudio de los regímenes de visibilidad -en tanto que perspectiva de análisis privilegiada en diálogo con el enfoque semiótico- en los estudios visuales sobre sexualidades, para luego analizar las performatividades queer como prácticas ambivalentes de espacialización y visibilización de las identidades LGBT en dos períodos del cine argentino: los años '60 y '70, y la post-dictadura.Within the theoretical-political horizon of LGBT visibilities understood as complex articulations between two socio-semiotic felds - namely, that of social discourse and the visual field of Argentine cinema - this paper focuses on the latter through an analysis of a corpus of films with explicit LGBT content, produced between 1960 and 1991. Firstly, it discusses the signifcance, in the area of Visual Studies, of studying regimes of sight as a privileged analytic perspective in complementary dialogue with the semiotic approach. Then, it analyses queer performativities in two periods of Argentine cinema - the sixties and seventies, and the post-dictatorship - as ambivalent practices of spatialization and of rendering visible LGBT identities

Entre enunciación, desfase y mediatización : pensar de otro modo

Este artículo tiene por objetivo explorar, en la obra de Eliseo Verón, la genealogía y desarrollo histórico de tres conceptos intrínsecamente interconectados -enunciación, mediatización y desfase (décalage)- postulando que el vínculo entre éstos no es causal, sino del orden de la operación político-intelectiva del tornar visible e inteligible, es decir como una relación de 'visibilización'. A partir de ejemplos tomados de sus estudios sobre fotografía y televisión, este trabajo se concentra en analizar el rol central que ocupa tanto el cuerpo significante como la enunciación como procesos y operaciones semióticas en las teorías veronianas de la mediatización y del décalage/desfase.This article seeks to explore the genealogy and historical development of three intrinsically interconnected concepts within Eliseo Veron's oeuvre - enunciation, mediatization and meaning-gap or out-of-joint-ness (décalage)- by claiming that the relation between them is not causal, but politico- intellective insofar as it renders each other visible and intelligible, thus putting forward the hypothesis of a relation of "visibilization". By using examples taken from his research work on photography and television, this paper focuses on analyzing the central role carried out by enunciation and the signifying body as semiotic processes and operations of enunciation in Verón's theories of mediatization and of the décalage (meaning-gap or out-of-joint-ness)

Simultaneidad/destemporalización : los happenings argentinos, laboratorios de sincronía

Las experimentaciones estético-conceptuales desarrolladas en el marco del Instituto Di Tella -en los sesenta- son interpretadas en este trabajo como un momento pionero y fuertemente reflexivo del concepto de medio -como materia configuradora e instituyente de relaciones espacio/temporales. Con un instrumental teórico que revisa, entre otras nociones, el concepto de happening como género, se detiene en el análisis de Simultaneidad en simultaneidad de Marta Minujin (1966) y El helicóptero de Oscar Masotta (1966), en tanto experiencias estéticas inaugurales que abordan la reflexión de las nuevas estructuras de la comunicación en una sociedad de masas en proceso de mediatización.The aesthetic and conceptual experiments carried out within the frame of the Instituto Di Tella -in the sixties- are interpreted in this work as a pioneer and highly refective moment of the concept of medium -as a matter capable of shaping and establishing space/time relations. While theoretically reviewing, among other notions, the concept of happening as a genre, the analysis focuses on Marta Minujin's Simultaneidad en simultaneidad (1966) and Oscar Masotta's El helicóptero (1966), as the earliest aesthetic experiences to undertake refection on the new communicational structures brought about by media in a mass society