Brilliant and engagingly written, Why Nations Fail answers the question that has stumped the experts for centuries: Why are some nations rich and others poor, divided by wealth and poverty, health and sickness, food and famine? Is it culture, the weather, geography? Perhaps ignorance of what the right policies are? Simply, no. None of these factors is either definitive or destiny. Otherwise, how to explain why Botswana has become one of the fastest growing countries in the world, while other African nations, such as Zimbabwe, the Congo, and Sierra Leone, are mired in poverty and violence? Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson conclusively show that it is man-made political and economic institutions that underlie economic success (or lack of it). Korea, to take just one of their fascinating examples, is a remarkably homogeneous nation, yet the people of North Korea are among the poorest on earth while their brothers and sisters in South Korea are among the richest. The south forged a society that created incentives, rewarded innovation, and allowed everyone to participate in economic opportunities. The economic success thus spurred was sustained because the government became accountable and responsive to citizens and the great mass of people. Sadly, the people of the north have endured decades of famine, political repression, and very different economic institutions—with no end in sight. The differences between the Koreas is due to the politics that created these completely different institutional trajectories. Based on fifteen years of original research Acemoglu and Robinson marshall extraordinary historical evidence from the Roman Empire, the Mayan city-states, medieval Venice, the Soviet Union, Latin America, England, Europe, the United States, and Africa to build a new theory of political economy with great relevance for the big questions of today, including: - China has built an authoritarian growth machine. Will it continue to grow at such high speed and overwhelm the West? - Are America’s best days behind it? Are we moving from a virtuous circle in which efforts by elites to aggrandize power are resisted to a vicious one that enriches and empowers a small minority? - What is the most effective way to help move billions of people from the rut of poverty to prosperity? More philanthropy from the wealthy nations of the West? Or learning the hard-won lessons of Acemoglu and Robinson’s breakthrough ideas on the interplay between inclusive political and economic institutions? Why Nations Fail will change the way you look at—and understand—the world.

La Historia Social de las Instituciones Punitivas está necesitada en España de encuentro y debate, de confrontación y colaboración entre investigadores e investigadoras. Solo así logrará hacerse visible e inteligible como tendencia historiográfica y sobre todo como apuesta teórico-metodológica, porque de hecho ya es más que creíble como práctica historiográfica. Aquí, en este libro, junto a los logros también se perfilan las carencias y los retos más acuciantes. Lejos de buscar una autonomía extemporánea, la Historia Social de las Instituciones Punitivas quiere buscar su propia viabilidad a base de intersecciones y buenas mezclas. Esos objetivos se planteaba el Grupo de Estudio sobre la Historia de la Prisión y las Instituciones Punitivas (GEHPIP) ―un equipo interuniversitario y con sede en la Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha (UCLM)― al organizar lo que de forma homónima decidió titular I Congreso Internacional sobre Historia de la Prisión y las Instituciones Punitivas, celebrado en Ciudad Real entre el 10 y el 12 de abril de 2013. El libro electrónico que aquí se presenta es una buena muestra de lo que allí se comunicó y discutió. Social History of Punitive Institutions in Spain needs meetings and discussions, comparison and collaboration between researchers. Only then it will become visible and intelligible as a historiographical trend and, above all, as a theoretical-methodological hope, because in fact, now it is more than conceivable as a historiographical practice. Here in this book are outlined, along with the achievements, the shortcomings and the most pressing challenges. Far from seeking an extemporaneous autonomy, Social History of Punitive Institutions wants to try to find its own feasibility based on intersections and good mixings. Those objectives were considered by the Study Group about History of Prison and Punitive Institutions (Grupo de Estudio sobre la Historia de la Prisión y las Instituciones Punitivas, GEHPIP) –an interuniversity team and with central office at Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha (UCLM)– when organising what it decided to name in an homonymous way 1st International Congress on History of Prison and Punitive Institutions (I Congreso Internacional sobre Historia de la Prisión y las Instituciones Punitivas), held in Ciudad Real (Spain) from 10 to 12 April 2013. The electronic book here presented is a good example of what it was told and discussed there.

El libro propone pensar el espacio y la esferas públicos como categorías transdisciplinarias para comprender las transformaciones profundas acaecidas en la región en las sociedades postautoritarias de América Latina.

This Yearbook brings together information concerning Spanish legal practice and a bibliography over the period of one year and makes it available to an international readership. It deals with both private and public international law, taken in a broad sense to include summary treatment of international organizations of which Spain is a member.

The public authorities have not successfully resolved the management of the traumatic memory of the wars, dictatorships and massacres to which the European project was always intended to be a counterpoint. The conflict of memories and the public discourses about the past are latent on ideological, political and cultural levels. However, if in the past the conflict concerning memories tended to develop inside the borders of countries, it has now leapt into the European arena. This has also led to the confrontation and questioning of the great narratives established in the common memory, especially with countries of the East joining the European Union. Each community, group or nation maintains common memories that do not always fit in or converge with a general overall account. The origins of the UB Solidarity Foundation’s European Observatory on Memories lie in these debates, and through this book — which includes the contributions of specialists in multiple disciplines and the speeches that were given at the first international symposium, “Memory and Power: A Transnational Perspective” — it hopes to present some of the key challenges that this conflict of memories has in store for us in the present and in the future.