Preferences for Regional Redistribution in Multi-Tiered Politics: The Role of Information and Survey Evidence

What explains individual support for redistribution among regions within a country? Building on extant models, we hypothesize that such preferences are affected by regional income, conditioned by individual income and political ideology. We test hypotheses with an experiment embedded in a nationally representative survey in Spain, where we randomly inform some citizens of the true relative income of their region. The effect of this information is therefore akin to changes in relative regional income. We find that citizens' learning about a region's relative position affects preferences for redistribution; specifically, low-income respondents in relatively well-off regions become particularly against inter-regional redistribution. The effects of regional income are moderated by political ideology and priming of "out group" regions. The findings have implications for debates about the applicability of economic models to explaining support for regional arrangements, and about the role of second-dimensional "identity" politics.This project has been funded by the Càtedra Pasqual Maragall d’Economia i Territori (University of Barcelona), and by the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) (project number: 200910I070). For comments on previous versions of this paper, we thank Sabine Flamand, Mark Kayser, Johannes Lindvall, as well as partici-pants at the MPSA 2013, EPSA 2013, CES 2013 and the Moscow Mini-Conference on Culture, Diversity and Development. The usual disclaimer applies

Territory, identity, and federalist preferences: Survey and experimental evidence

What explains citizen preferences for redistribution across regions within a country? Around the world, countries vary greatly in how much central governments tax wealthier regions to redistribute to poorer ones in order to reduce inequality across regions. In many federations or multi-tiered polities, these issues are salient, electorally contested, and at times polarizing; they have sometimes led to demands for or attempts at secession from disaffected regions. Such issues have been politicized in wealthy countries including Belgium, Canada, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom, as well as in poorer or middle-income states including Argentina, Brazil, China, India, Mexico, and Russia. Yet the recent growth in research on the causes and consequences of different federal arrangements and fiscal federalism have not studied in depth the roots of individual preferences over basic issues related to federal institutions and fiscal federalism. This omission is surprising given the high salience of this package of issues in such countries

La ciudadanía democrática ante las nuevas desigualdades

Los autores analizan en este artículo los efectos de lo que se denominan las nuevas desigualdades, es decir formas específicas que están adquiriendo las brechas económicas en las sociedades posindustriales contemporáneas. Lo cual es clave para entender la naturaleza de los conflictos políticos de nuestras democracias

Control kernel based adaptive control implementation

[EN] A control system with distributed computing resources always should guarantee the safe control of the plant. In this contribution, the concept of control kernel is used for that purpose. Two types of nodes with different resources are defined: the powerful server node and the resource-constrained light node. This architecture allows to split the control tasks into two blocks. Those demanding strong computing resources are allocated in the server nodes and those compelling tasks required to ensure the safety of the controlled plant are allocated in the light nodes. Resource limitations lead to control adaptation. Two simple applications illustrate some of the benefits of this architecture with one server node and one light node, even the architecture can be extended to several nodes. In the first case, an adaptive control is implemented in the server node, providing the control algorithm to the light node, which is also able to compute a local safe control action. In the second experiment, two different control tasks requiring different resources are implemented in a mobile robot control. To keep bounded the computing time at the local level, the supervisor decides the time allocated to each activity, providing the resulting controller to the light node.This work has been partially granted by Conselleria de Educación Generalitat Valenciana, under PROMETEO project number 2008-088, and Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovaci´on under COBAMI project DPI2011-28507-C02-01/02.Simarro Fernández, R.; Albertos Pérez, P.; Simó Ten, JE. (2013). Control kernel based adaptive control implementation. SIGBED review. 10(1):24-28. doi:10.1145/2492385.2492389S242810

Secession and Social Polarization: Evidence from Catalonia

Inequality and governance in unstable democracies — the mediating role of trustDoes secessionism lead to social polarization? Despite much research on independence movements, their relationship to polarization, a key mechanism theorized as increasing the chances of violent conflict, remains less understood. We argue that secessionist conflicts can polarize along both policy and ethnic group lines even when they take the form of non-violent disputes. However, polarization does not necessarily lead to violence. We explore the case of Catalonia, a region that experienced a deep secessionist crisis in the last months of 2017, using novel data from a panel survey fielded across two key time periods and embedded experiments. We find a society with great levels of affective polarization in that pro- and anti-independence advocates have strong negative views of one another. In addition, there is spillover in terms of the assessment of associated language groups. However, there is a group of moderates in between the two policy poles that limit the extent of this polarization. Contrary to common wisdom, these moderates have very stable preferences. Our results contribute to the understanding of the underexplored polarization dynamics of secessionist movements, particularly in places where high-intensity violence (i.e. terrorism, civil war) has not yet occurred

Redox feedback regulation of ANAC089 signaling alters seed germination and stress response

21 p.-4 fig.-2 tab. 1 graph. abst.The interplay between the phytohormone abscisic acid (ABA) and the gasotransmitter nitric oxide (NO) regulates seed germination and post-germinative seedling growth. We show that GAP1 (germination in ABA and cPTIO 1) encodes the transcription factor ANAC089 with a critical membrane-bound domain and extranuclear localization. ANAC089 mutants lacking the membrane-tethered domain display insensitivity to ABA,salt, and osmotic and cold stresses, revealing a repressor function. Whole-genome transcriptional profiling and DNA-binding specificity reveals that ANAC089 regulates ABA- and redox-related genes. ANAC089 truncated mutants exhibit higher NO and lower ROS and ABA endogenous levels, alongside an altered thiol and disulfide homeostasis. Consistently, translocation of ANAC089 to the nucleus is directed by changes in cellular redox status after treatments with NO scavengers and redox-related compounds. Our results reveal ANAC089 to be a master regulator modulating redox homeostasis and NO levels, able to repress ABA synthesis and signaling during Arabidopsis seed germination and abiotic stress.Wethank the Spanish networks BIO2015-68957-REDT and RED2018-102397-T for stimulating discussions, as well as Dr. José M. Carrasco and Dr. Pablo Vera (IBMCP-CSIC) for help with the protein-expression experiments of the PBM. This work was financed by grants EcoSeed Impacts of Environmental Conditions on Seed Quality ‘‘EcoSeed-311840’’ ERC.KBBE.2012.1.1-01;BIO2017-85758-R and CSD2007-00057 (TRANSPLANTA) from the Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades (MICIU) (Spain); SA313P18 and SA137P20 from Junta de Castilla y León; Escalera de Excelencia CLU-2018-04 co-funded by the P.O. FEDER of Castilla y León 2014–2020 Spain (to O.L.); and the PhD and University Teacher Training Fellowship, Spanish Ministry of Science and Education (to P.A.).Peer reviewe

White Paper 1: New foundations for a sustainable global society

Coordinación: Eduardo Moyano Estrada; Tomás García Azcárate.This volume is focused on the axis “New foundations for a sustainable global society”, and refers to the important process of global change that affects all dimensions of society, disrupting the context in which scientific work has been developed in recent decades. It is a process of change not comparable to what happened decades ago, mainly due to its breadth, multidimensionality and interdependence, and also to the fact that this process manifests itself simultaneously in many areas, territories and social groups. Its analysis therefore requires carrying out a convergence exercise between areas and lines of research, betting on a multidisciplinary approach, since both “globalization” and “sustainability” are, concepts that affect society, as a whole.Peer reviewe

Making globalization endogenous :the domestic determinants of international capital mobility

Globalization is usually depicted as an exogenous force of recent times that alters the fundamentals of our societies, economies, and political systems. In sharp contrast, this paper is a first step to show how the process of economic internationalization can be seen as the result of political decisions taken at the national level. By looking at governmental regulation of international capital flows, I develop a very simple political-economy model to account for the different incentives of governments to liberalize. The derived hypotheses are tested –and confirmed- using a worldwide dataset. In democratic regimes, liberalization of international capital flows is more easily embraced by wealthier countries –because capital-owners have much more to benefit from such a policy- and by countries with lower levels of government intervention in the economy –because compensating losers is very costly in these economies. This conclusion implies a fundamental difference between trade and financial liberalization. Whereas compensating the negatively affected groups of openness is easy in the former case, international capital mobility makes the task of compensation more difficult, because it involves high transaction costs. Autocracies, in contrast with democracies, do not appear to be bounded by these politico-economic constraints, and their movements towards more integration in global markets appear somewhat more unpredictable.Peer reviewe

Dividir lo indivisible: separación de poderes y soberanía popular en James Madison

El principio según el cual los poderes del Estado deben estar dispersos entre diferentes ramas con el fin de evitar el despotismo es uno de los pilares del pensamiento político liberal. En el paradigma liberal, la mayor amenaza a la libertad individual es el abuso que el estado puede hacer de su autoridad. Y la separación de poderes es una obvia respuesta institucional ante tal amenaza. Aunque la lógica por la cual la separación de poderes frena las tentaciones despóticas de los gobiernos es sencilla a primera vista, la existencia de un gobierno dividido con la protección de los derechos y libertades individuales entra en conflicto con las (también republicanas) ideas de soberanía popular y, especialmente, gobierno responsable (accountable) ante la ciudadanía.Peer reviewe