The inconveniences of transnational democracy

Despite some limited moves toward openness and accountability, suprastate policy formation in such bodies as the World Trade Organization remains fundamentally exclusive of individuals within states. This article critiques the “don’t kill the goose” arguments commonly offered in defense of such exclusions. It highlights similarities between those arguments and past arguments for elitist forms of democracy, where strict limitations are advocated on the participation of nonelites in the name of allowing leaders to act most effectively in the broad public interest. Advocated here is movement toward a strongly empowered WTO parliamentary body that would be guided in practice by a principle of democratic symmetry, attempting to match input to the increasing impacts of WTO governance. A parliament with codecision powers broadly similar to those of the European Parliament is offered as a long-term institutional ideal

Transborder service learning: new fronteras in civic engagement

Hour after hour, box by box, and bag by bag, the team of students transferred the thousands of food items warehoused in a second-floor conference room at the Fletcher Library on Arizona State University's West campus. Employing techniques they had developed over the six weeks of a campus-wide food drive, they formed a chain, tossing food back from the conference room to a waiting cart, then down an elevator, to a 16-foot rental truck waiting at the library loading dock. There, another student team, most sweating profusely in the 95 degrees of a spring day in Phoenix, rolled the items into the truck and stacked them. Ultimately, the truck would sag under the weight of tens of thousands of food items beginning the first leg of a journey to a community center that serves hot lunches to children in some of the poorest shantytown neighborhoods of Nogales, Mexico

Monetary Policy in Chile: a black box?

This paper studies monetary policy in Chile during the 1986-1997 period. We concentrate in understanding the monetary transmission mechanism by which the Central Bank instrument—the real interest rate—affects total expenditure, output and the inflation rate. The methodology used is structural VARS. We find a weak effect of the interest rate on all the variables. The interest rate has a significant effect on the expenditure-output gap. Both the interest rate and the expenditure-output gap have a significant effect on the price of non-traded goods, in line with the dependent economy model (the Australian model).

Posturas de profesores universitarios de cálculo ante una propuesta de capacitación en didáctica

En la actualidad existen diversos esfuerzos para proveer al profesor universitario una adecuada capacitación, buscando actualizar y mejorar su desempeño profesional. Capacitación que no sólo incluye aspectos disciplinares, sino también aspectos didácticos y pedagógicos. Sin embargo, tales esfuerzos parecen no lograr incidir en su práctica docente. Este fenómeno plantea la necesidad de observar las distintas posturas que los profesores toman ante los temas que se abordan en los cursos de formación en didáctica. Consideramos que los resultados aquí presentados pueden constituir un adecuado marco de referencia para la elaboración de cursos de formación dirigidos a profesores universitarios del área de ciencias exactas

Winnerless competition in coupled Lotka-Volterra maps

Winnerless competition is analyzed in coupled maps with discrete temporal evolution of the Lotka-Volterra type of arbitrary dimension. Necessary and sufficient conditions for the appearance of structurally stable heteroclinic cycles as a function of the model parameters are deduced. It is shown that under such conditions winnerless competition dynamics is fully exhibited. Based on these conditions different cases characterizing low, intermediate, and high dimensions are therefore computationally recreated. An analytical expression for the residence times valid in the N-dimensional case is deduced and successfully compared with the simulations.J.L.C. and E.D.G. acknowledge support from IVIC-141, L.A.G.-D. acknowledges support from IVIC-1089 and P.V. acknowledges support from MINECO TIN2012-30883

Individual Rights and the Democratic Boundary Problem

Boundary problems arguably are primary in democratic theory. Until we settle who ‘the people’ are, numerous questions around rule by the people cannot themselves be settled. Recent accounts have advocated extending participatory boundaries outward, up to the fully global level, in order to better match decision makers to decision takers in a more integrated global system, or to appropriately account for coercion to which all are said to be subjected. Some critics of these accounts would give much stronger emphasis to national or other bonds between democratic participants. They would limit inclusion and participation accordingly. Defended here is an approach that is focused on enhancing individual rights protections through extending political boundaries. It would challenge the idea, implicit in ‘all-affected’ and ‘all-subjected’ approaches, that expanding the franchise is the appropriate tool for protecting participants’ vital interests. It challenges also any strong necessity claims for shared national sentiment to sustain democratic rule. The case of Turkish accession to the European Union is given some attention, for ways in which it highlights issues around the rights protections at stake, as well as ways in which some problematic identity questions lie at the root of much resistance to boundary extensions. While the application of a rights-based approach to the boundary problem will not be so straightforward in all cases, the approach can significantly inform participatory inclusion and institutional design at various levels of governance