How Guatemala Defied the Odds Schwartz, Rachel A; Isaacs, Anita
Journal of democracy,
10/2023, Letnik:
34, Številka:
4
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Guatemala has experienced sustained democratic backsliding, including the manipulation of the 2023 electoral playing field. Yet, against the odds, Guatemalan citizens defied the ruling regime's ...electoral authoritarian strategy, voting an anticorruption reformer into power. This article analyzes Guatemala's (anti)democratic trajectory and explains how opposition actors resisted further backsliding during the 2023 electoral process. The authors argue that the Guatemalan regime reflects a "criminal oligarchy," and examine how rule-of-law advances prompted elite backlash that eviscerated democratic institutions. The unexpected 2023 electoral outcome, however, illustrates the possibilities of exploiting fissures in the criminal-oligarchic coalition to arrest authoritarian consolidation.
The relationship between war and state formation is a central topic in the social sciences. While scholarship on interstate war posits that conflict triggers extractive processes that build the ...state, research findings on the effects of intrastate war are more mixed, often suggesting that civil war inhibits extraction and induces state decay. This study, however, posits that the negative relationship between civil war and revenue extraction is not underpinned by institutional destruction but by the wartime introduction of undermining rules that structure behavior in ways that subvert taxation. To illustrate this claim, it traces the evolution of undermining rules within the customs administration at the height of the Guatemalan armed conflict. As the perceived escalation of the insurgent threat created institutional ambiguity, newly empowered political-military elites implemented alternative procedures for capturing customs revenues, which systematically undermined the state’s extractive capacity. Comparing this case with one of reinforcing rules that bolster extraction, I posit that the broad or narrow nature of the rule-making coalition explains divergent paths of wartime institutional development. Overall, this study uncovers the inner workings of the counterinsurgent state and illustrates how civil war dynamics induce processes of institutional change that can have long-term effects on state performance.
ABSTRACT
The coexistence of predatory informal rules alongside formal democratic institutions is a defining, if pernicious, feature of Latin America’s political landscape. How do such rules remain so ...resilient in the face of bureaucratic reforms? This article explicates the mechanisms underlying the persistence of such rules and challenges conventional explanations through process-tracing analysis in one arena: Guatemala’s customs administration. During Guatemala’s period of armed conflict and military rule, military intelligence officers introduced a powerful customs fraud scheme that endured for more than 20 years, despite state reforms. Its survival is best attributed to the ability of the distributional coalition underwriting the predatory rules to capture new political and economic spaces facilitated by political party and market reforms. This illustrates that distributional approaches to institutional change must attend to how those with a stake in the status quo may continue to uphold perverse institutional arrangements on the margins of state power.
Dominant theories of mass violence hold that strategic concerns in civil war drive the deliberate targeting of civilians. However, the causal mechanisms that link strategic objectives to large-scale ...violence against civilians remain underspecified, and as such the causal logics that underpin each remain blurred. In this article, we identify and explicate four plausible mechanisms that explain why armed groups would target, for strategic purposes, civilians in war. We then turn to the peak period of violence during the Guatemalan armed conflict to assess which mechanisms were most prevalent. Specifically, we leverage unique archival data: 359 pages of military files from Operation Sofía, a month-long counterinsurgent campaign waged in the northwestern Ixil region. Through process tracing of real-time internal communications, we find that state actors most commonly described the civilian population as loyal to rebel forces; violence against civilians was a means to weaken the insurgency. Troops on the ground also depicted the Ixil population as ‘winnable’, which suggests that security forces used violence in this period to shape civilian behavior. These findings are most consistent with the idea that mass violence in this case and period was a coercive instrument to defeat insurgents by punishing civilians for collaboration. The evidence from this period is less consistent with a logic of genocide, in which the purpose of violence would be to destroy ‘unwinnable’ civilian groups. Our analysis illustrates how a mechanism-centered approach based on process tracing of conflict archives can help uncover logics underlying civilian killing.
The year 2021 marked the 25th anniversary of the signing of Guatemala's landmark peace accords. Yet celebrations of this historic achievement stood in sharp contrast to the year's alarming trends in ...the deterioration of democracy and the rule of law. Reviewing the events of 2021, this article uncovers two key patterns in Guatemalan politics, both evidence of democratic decline: 1) open assaults on judicial independence and breaches of the constitutional order, and 2) an escalation in the criminalization of government critics, particularly those on the frontlines of the anti-corruption struggle. It also takes stock of the most pernicious consequences of these patterns, including the abysmal Covid-19 response and the new opportunities for corruption amid resurgent impunity. Combined, these dynamics have also increased tensions within US-Guatemala relations as the Biden White House increasingly perceived the Guatemalan government as an unreliable partner in tackling the root causes of migration. In sum, 2021 was an inflection point in Guatemala's 25-year trajectory of peace-one that has steadily sent the country down an authoritarian path like many of its neighbors in the Western Hemisphere.
The present study aimed to identify mechanisms of change in individuals with moderately severe obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) receiving cognitive therapy (CT). Thirty-six adults with OCD ...received CT over 24 weeks. At weeks 0, 4/6, 12, 16/18, and 24, independent evaluators assessed OCD severity, along with obsessive beliefs and maladaptive schemas. To examine mechanisms of change, we utilized a time-varying lagged regression model with a random intercept and slope. Results indicated that perfectionism and certainty obsessive beliefs and maladaptive schemas related to dependency and incompetence significantly mediated (improved) treatment response. In conclusion, cognitive changes in perfectionism/certainty beliefs and maladaptive schemas related to dependency/incompetence precede behavioral symptom reduction for OCD patients. Targeting these mechanisms in future OCD treatment trials will emphasize the most relevant processes and facilitate maximum improvement.
•We sought to identify mediators of improvement in cognitive therapy (CT) for OCD.•Participants included 36 adults with OCD who received CT over 24 weeks.•Perfectionism and certainty obsessive beliefs improved treatment response.•Schemas related to dependency significantly mediated improvement in CT.•Specific cognitive changes precede behavioral symptom reduction in CT for OCD.
Estimates of divergence dates between species improve our understanding of processes ranging from nucleotide substitution to speciation. Such estimates are frequently based on molecular genetic ...differences between species; therefore, they rely on accurate estimates of the number of such differences (i.e. substitutions per site, measured as branch length on phylogenies). We used simulations to determine the effects of dataset size, branch length heterogeneity, branch depth, and analytical framework on branch length estimation across a range of branch lengths. We then reanalyzed an empirical dataset for plethodontid salamanders to determine how inaccurate branch length estimation can affect estimates of divergence dates.
The accuracy of branch length estimation varied with branch length, dataset size (both number of taxa and sites), branch length heterogeneity, branch depth, dataset complexity, and analytical framework. For simple phylogenies analyzed in a Bayesian framework, branches were increasingly underestimated as branch length increased; in a maximum likelihood framework, longer branch lengths were somewhat overestimated. Longer datasets improved estimates in both frameworks; however, when the number of taxa was increased, estimation accuracy for deeper branches was less than for tip branches. Increasing the complexity of the dataset produced more misestimated branches in a Bayesian framework; however, in an ML framework, more branches were estimated more accurately. Using ML branch length estimates to re-estimate plethodontid salamander divergence dates generally resulted in an increase in the estimated age of older nodes and a decrease in the estimated age of younger nodes.
Branch lengths are misestimated in both statistical frameworks for simulations of simple datasets. However, for complex datasets, length estimates are quite accurate in ML (even for short datasets), whereas few branches are estimated accurately in a Bayesian framework. Our reanalysis of empirical data demonstrates the magnitude of effects of Bayesian branch length misestimation on divergence date estimates. Because the length of branches for empirical datasets can be estimated most reliably in an ML framework when branches are <1 substitution/site and datasets are > or =1 kb, we suggest that divergence date estimates using datasets, branch lengths, and/or analytical techniques that fall outside of these parameters should be interpreted with caution.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Subtropical marine stratus clouds regulate coastal and global climate, but future trends in these clouds are uncertain. In coastal Southern California (CSCA), interannual variations in summer stratus ...cloud occurrence are spatially coherent across 24 airfields and dictated by positive relationships with stability above the marine boundary layer (MBL) and MBL height. Trends, however, have been spatially variable since records began in the mid‐1900s due to differences in nighttime warming. Among CSCA airfields, differences in nighttime warming, but not daytime warming, are strongly and positively related to fraction of nearby urban cover, consistent with an urban heat island effect. Nighttime warming raises the near‐surface dew point depression, which lifts the altitude of condensation and cloud base height, thereby reducing fog frequency. Continued urban warming, rising cloud base heights, and associated effects on energy and water balance would profoundly impact ecological and human systems in highly populated and ecologically diverse CSCA.
Key Points
Low clouds regulate temperature and drought in coastal Southern California
Urban warming has caused substantially increased cloud base height since 1948
Feedbacks between warming and decreased summer cloud frequency are expected
Abstract
A central challenge of post-conflict recovery is the reconstruction of state institutions, which often emerge from war destroyed or otherwise unable to carry out core administrative ...activities. But scholarship on international peacebuilding and post-conflict politics tends to focus narrowly on the functional aspects of the state, the state-system, to the neglect of another critical dimension: the state-idea, or its symbolic and normative authority. How do internationally backed institution-building efforts shape the ideational foundations of the state following conflict? Drawing on original interviews and archival research from postwar Guatemala, this article illustrates how, paradoxically, postwar peacebuilding and rule of law initiatives that sought to strengthen the capacity of state institutions simultaneously contributed to the discursive construction of the state as a criminal organization. Specifically, the United Nations’ International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG), in seeking to combat state-based criminal structures and bolster institutions, transformed long-held conceptions of Guatemala's “weak” or “failed” state into an alternative vision of the state as a powerful complex of clandestine, predatory networks, and practices. In conjuring the state as a criminal organization that appropriates the formal organs of political power for illicit ends, this international statebuilding initiative generated a coherent and durable state-idea that belies key advances in institutional capacity and the rule of law. Overall, this article contributes to growing debates about the unintended, deleterious effects of international statebuilding efforts by demonstrating how distinct ideas of state power come to fill the void between state capacity and legitimacy.
Genomic structural variation is an important source of genetic and phenotypic diversity, playing a critical role in evolution. The recent availability of a high-quality reference genome for the ...eastern oyster,
, and whole-genome sequence data of samples from across the species range in the USA, provides an opportunity to explore structural variation across the genome of this species. Our analysis shows significantly greater individual-level duplications of regions across the genome than that of most model vertebrate species. Duplications are widespread across all ten chromosomes with variation in frequency per chromosome. The eastern oyster shows a large interindividual variation in duplications as well as particular chromosomal regions with a higher density of duplications. A high percentage of duplications seen in
lie completely within genes and exons, suggesting the potential for impacts on gene function. These results support the hypothesis that structural changes may play a significant role in standing genetic variation in
, and potentially have a role in their adaptive and evolutionary success. Altogether, these results suggest that copy number variation plays an important role in the genomic variation of
. This article is part of the Theo Murphy meeting issue 'Molluscan genomics: broad insights and future directions for a neglected phylum'.
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