Accountability horizontal: la institucionalización legal de la desconfianza política

El artículo se ocupa de estudiar la desconfianza y sus expresiones institucionalizadas enla esfera pública, partiendo del análisis de la accountability horizontal. El interés en eltema parte de la ausencia o extrema debilidad de este tipo de rendición de cuentas enbuena parte de las democracias latinoamericanas contemporáneas. En esta línea, en eltexto se discute la pertinencia de las distintas agencias de balance (control que se producecuando alguno de los grandes poderes —ejecutivo, legislativo o judicial— sobrepasa ilegalmentesu propia jurisdicción) y otras agencias asignadas (aquellas encargadas de enfrentarriesgos específicos de transgresión y/o de corrupción). Todos estos tipos de accountabilityson importantes para el adecuado funcionamiento del régimen democrático

Parasite histones are toxic to brain endothelium and link blood barrier breakdown and thrombosis in cerebral malaria

Microvascular thrombosis and blood–brain barrier (BBB) breakdown are key components of cerebral malaria (CM) pathogenesis in African children and are implicated in fatal brain swelling. How Plasmodium falciparum infection causes this endothelial disruption and why this occurs, particularly in the brain, is not fully understood. In this study, we have demonstrated that circulating extracellular histones, equally of host and parasite origin, are significantly elevated in CM patients. Higher histone levels are associated with brain swelling on magnetic resonance imaging. On postmortem brain sections of CM patients, we found that histones are colocalized with P falciparum–infected erythrocytes sequestered inside small blood vessels, suggesting that histones might be expelled locally during parasite schizont rupture. Histone staining on the luminal vascular surface colocalized with thrombosis and leakage, indicating a possible link between endothelial surface accumulation of histones and coagulation activation and BBB breakdown. Supporting this, patient sera or purified P falciparum histones caused disruption of barrier function and were toxic to cultured human brain endothelial cells, which were abrogated with antihistone antibody and nonanticoagulant heparin. Overall, our data support a role for histones of parasite and host origin in thrombosis, BBB breakdown, and brain swelling in CM, processes implicated in the causal pathway to death. Neutralizing histones with agents such as nonanticoagulant heparin warrant exploration to prevent brain swelling in the development or progression of CM and thereby to improve outcomes

“A very orderly retreat”: Democratic transition in East Germany, 1989-90

East Germany's 1989-90 democratisation is among the best known of East European transitions, but does not lend itself to comparative analysis, due to the singular way in which political reform and democratic consolidation were subsumed by Germany's unification process. Yet aspects of East Germany's democratisation have proved amenable to comparative approaches. This article reviews the comparative literature that refers to East Germany, and finds a schism between those who designate East Germany's transition “regime collapse” and others who contend that it exemplifies “transition through extrication”. It inquires into the merits of each position and finds in favour of the latter. Drawing on primary and secondary literature, as well as archival and interview sources, it portrays a communist elite that was, to a large extent, prepared to adapt to changing circumstances and capable of learning from “reference states” such as Poland. Although East Germany was the Soviet state in which the positions of existing elites were most threatened by democratic transition, here too a surprising number succeeded in maintaining their position while filing across the bridge to market society. A concluding section outlines the alchemy through which their bureaucratic power was transmuted into property and influence in the “new Germany”

Democracy, development and the executive presidency in Sri Lanka

This paper examines the developmental causes and consequences of the shift from a parliamentary to a semi-presidential system in Sri Lanka in 1978, examining its provenance, rationale, and its unfolding trajectory. drawing on a wide range of sources, it set out an argument that the executive presidency was born out of an elite impulse to create a more stable, centralised political structure to resist the welfarist electoral pressures that had taken hold in the post-independence period, and to pursue a market-driven model of economic growth. This strategy succeeded in its early years 197801993, when presidents retained legislative control, maintained a strong personal commitment to market reforms, and cultivated alternative sources of legitimacy. In the absence of these factors, the presidency slipped into crisis over 1994-2004 as resistance to elite-led projects of state reform mounted and as the president lost control of the legislature. Since 2005 the presidency has regained its power, but at the cost of abandoning its original rationale and function as a means to recalibrate the elite/mass power relations to facilitate elite-led reform agendas

Pere Alberch's developmental morphospaces and the evolution of cognition

In this article we argue for an extension of Pere Alberch's notion of developmental morphospace into the realm of cognition and introduce the notion of cognitive phenotype as a new tool for the evolutionary and developmental study of cognitive abilities