Political fragmentation, decentralization and development cooperation: Ecuador in the Latin American context

"Decentralization reforms have been among the most important aspects of state modernization in developing countries. From a normative perspective, such reforms are expected to promote economic development and democratization. Unfortunately, however, the course of real decentralization processes has often been incoherent and defective. In this context, this study analyses the challenges for successful decentralization in fragmented polities focusing on Latin America and the special case of Ecuador. Based on a political economy perspective on decentralization, we attempt to show, how political fragmentation has affected decentralization. From there, we develop criteria on how development assistance can at least partly counter the negative effects of political fragmentation. Finally, we analyse to which extend donor agencies have been pursuing such strategies in Ecuador. This study is the result of a research project, which has been carried out at the German Development Institute (DIE) in 2004 and 2005 as part of the DIE Post-Graduate Training Course for young professionals. Field research was conducted from February to April 2004. The research project was carried out in close cooperation with the Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales (FLACSO) in Quito Ecuador, which supported the project from its early stages. Among many FLACSO members, who gave advice and valuable comments on different part of the study's content, the authors especially thank Santiago Ortiz, who has intellectually and logistically supported the project from its beginning. Many thanks also go to the GTZ program on decentralization in Ecuador. Janos Zimmermann and his team provided us with many valuable insights about the decentralization process in Ecuador and development cooperation’s attempts to foster subsidiarity oriented state structures. We also profited much from different presentations of the study’s preliminary results at FLACSO in Quito and at the Interamerican Development Bank and the World Bank in Washington, where the respective staff members constructively commented our findings. In Bonn, our colleagues at the DIE also offered useful comments and constructive criticism. Special thanks go to Matthias Krause, Tilman Altenburg and Oliver Schlumberger. Finally, we would like to thank Gisela Kuhlmann, without whose skills and patience, the technical process of editing this study would never have come to an end." [author's abstract

Staatskrise in Ecuador: die erneute Amtsenthebung eines Präsidenten offenbart ungelöste Defizite des demokratischen Staates und zugleich neue Formen politischen Protests

"Am 20. April wurde Staatspräsident Lucio Gutiérrez als Konsequenz einer sich seit Ende 2004 zuspitzenden Staatskrise des Amtes enthoben. Damit beendete der dritte Präsident in Folge seine Amtszeit vor deren regulärem Ablauf. Die direkten Ursachen für den Fall des Präsidenten lagen vornehmlich in einer Kombination aus verfassungswidriger und klientelistischer Politik sowie in der Unfähigkeit der Regierung, tragfähige Koalitionen zu schmieden. Die strukturellen Hintergründe für die anhaltende Instabilität auf nationaler Ebene liegen in der Unfähigkeit des hochgradig fragmentierten Partei- ensystems, die drängenden ethnischen, regionalen und sozioökonomischen Herausforderungen des Landes zu bewältigen. Die Proteste im Vorfeld der Amtsenthebung haben sich jedoch inhaltlich wie organisatorisch deutlich von denen der Vorjahre unterschieden. Sie waren nicht ethnisch und kaum wirtschaftspolitisch begründet, sondern wurden vornehmlich von lediglich rudimentär organisierten Mitgliedern der Mittelschichten Quitos getragen, die ihren Unmut über die dominierenden Praktiken der Regierung und der politischen Elite insgesamt zum Ausdruck brachten. Die These, dass diese Proteste Ausdruck einer reiferen Zivilgesellschaft sind, die eine Reform des Parteiensystems nach sich ziehen werde, muss jedoch noch mit Vorsicht bewertet werden. (Autorenreferat

Proceedings of the Linux Audio Conference 2018

These proceedings contain all papers presented at the Linux Audio Conference 2018. The conference took place at c-base, Berlin, from June 7th - 10th, 2018 and was organized in cooperation with the Electronic Music Studio at TU Berlin

Navigation and visualisation with HoloLens in endovascular aortic repair

Endovascular aortic repair (EVAR) is a minimal-invasive technique that prevents life-threatening rupture in patients with aortic pathologies by implantation of an endoluminal stent graft. During the endovascular procedure, device navigation is currently performed by fluoroscopy in combination with digital subtraction angiography. This study presents the current iterative process of biomedical engineering within the disruptive interdisciplinary project Nav EVAR, which includes advanced navigation, image techniques and augmented reality with the aim of reducing side effects (namely radiation exposure and contrast agent administration) and optimising visualisation during EVAR procedures. This article describes the current prototype developed in this project and the experiments conducted to evaluate it