Abstract, Civic Organizations and Internet Social Networks: A Case Study in the Province of Buenos Aires

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Civic Organizations and Internet Social Networks: A Case Study in the Province of Buenos Aires
by Ana Cecilia Silva

A neighborhood assembly in a medium-sized city in the province of Buenos Aires formed in connection with a petition for designation as a historical protection area uses the Internet to generate visibility spaces alternative to those of the traditional media and install its own agenda, to include in those new spaces the voices and perspectives of new social actors, and to organize and improve its own participatory management. Its use of Facebook has acquired some of the features of “community media.” At the same time, its use of the Internet for internal communication and coordination is clearly accessory to face-to-face interaction. There is a generational difference in access to and decision making about the content to be posted in the various media, and spokespersons have become authorized voices. Appealing to both the traditional and the new media is a crucial aspect of the assembly’s positioning strategy, but the strategy is in constant revision.

Abstract, Hall of Mirrors: Media, Democratization, and the Public Sphere in Maranhão, Brazil

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Hall of Mirrors: Media, Democratization, and the Public Sphere in Maranhão, Brazil
by Julián Durazo Herrmann

Freedom of expression and access to diverse sources of information are seen as critical elements of democracy, although their concretization on the ground is subject to strong interference. Recent regime change in Maranhão, one of Brazil’s poorest states, has led to the emergence of new media and some expansion of the public sphere. The traditional oligarchy continues to dominate the media, however, and the opposition media replicate its exclusion of nonelite actors. The Maranhão experience confirms that normative approaches to the media either as automatic contributors to democracy or as instruments of elite manipulation have little value for understanding media dynamics.

Abstract, Whose Rights? Freedom-of-Expression Critiques of Ecuadorian Media Democratization

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Whose Rights? Freedom-of-Expression Critiques of Ecuadorian Media Democratization
 by Christian Tym

Despite its media reforms designed to democratize the country’s media landscape, the Ecuadorian government has been subject to constant condemnation from major U.S.-based human rights organizations on freedom-of-expression grounds. A close examination of these critiques and the Ecuadorian media reforms to which they correspond and a comparison of the Ecuadorian government’s and critical human rights organizations’ positions with liberal scholarship on the right to freedom of expression leads to the conclusion that Ecuadorian media reform is consistent with liberal social-democratic principles and, by contrast, human rights organizations uphold an early-modern interpretation of liberalism that is marginal within scholarship on freedom of expression.

Abstract, Clientelism a Stumbling Block for Democratization?: Lessons from Mexico by Kristin Seffer

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Abstract:  Clientelism a Stumbling Block for Democratization?: Lessons from Mexico 

by Kristin Seffer

Clientelism is a form of social conflict management and as such is more than mere vote buying or a way of undermining rational-legal systems. Integrating clientelism into the debate over the transition to democracy makes it possible to explain the outcomes of stagnating political transition processes. Under the condition of labor surplus, clientelism hinders political inclusion by undermining the class-based organizations that might challenge the privileged access of the elite to resources. Consideration of clientelism helps explain the case of Mexico, which has been classified as a deviant case in transition research because two transition processes there, at the beginning and the end of the twentieth century, did not end in complete democratization.