Article
Commentary: Important lessons from the unfolding health crisis in Venezuela
Prognosis of the development of relationship between Russia and Venezuela.
The article is devoted to the study of international research experience of migration, especially internal migration. The total number of countries studies the migration of population by censuses using the question of the place of birth. Thus, in 2005 censuses rounds from 141 countries, conducted a census at that time, 115 of which asked this question. Using the criterion of lifetime migration allows evaluating the internal migration. In the absence of other data sources, the application of this criterion can be used for international comparisons of internal migration. In many countries there are features of the usage of this criterion, which express as either a fractional difference in administrative-territorial division, or in combination with other methods of research. Besides asking about the place of birth it is also asked about the previous place of residence and place of residence at some point in the past. Censuses are supplemented by special surveys, such as American Community Survey in the United States and the National Sample Survey in India. By the case of India, Venezuela and the United States the author identified the distinctive features of internal migration in individual countries from different parts of the world and with different levels of socio-economic development. In India the question about the previous place of residence has the same popularity, apart from the question of the place of birth. Both criteria give a similar pattern of migration, despite the differences in the definition of migration. Until now, the most large-scale migrations are displacement of rural population. In Venezuela, as in many other Latin American countries, there is a lack of demographic statistics. Under these conditions, the census is the most important source of information about the inter-regional migration. A special government program was approved in this country to overcome the imbalance of territorial redistribution of the population in the 1960s. In the U.S., the population of which is known for its mobility, there is a strong differentiation among the states in migration activity.
Francisco de Miranda (March 28, 1750, Caracas, Venezuela—July 14, 1816, La Carraca, Spain) was a Spanish American revolutionary who after a career in the Spanish Army from 1783 devoted his life to the cause of Spanish American independence. The various designs of Miranda in the 1780s–1800s were founded upon the idea of a military liberation expedition to Spanish America led by him and organized with the support of a power (Great Britain, United States, France) in conflict with Spain that would then foment existing discontent and lead to a wide-scale revolt and independence. Though these plans failed, as did his attempt to organize an expedition from New York without the support of any power (1805–1807), in 1810 the revolution in Spanish America started without his participation as a consequence of the Napoleonic invasion of Spain. Miranda was called to Caracas and eventually led the short-lived First Venezuelan Republic in 1812. After its defeat he spent the last years of his life in Spanish jails. Miranda’s failure influenced the South American revolutionaries who adopted the tactics of unconditional warfare against the Spanish troops from 1813.
A shrewd and sophisticated expert in world affairs and political intrigues and an acclaimed military commander, Miranda was persistently trying to use the conflicts between great powers to achieve his goal though he knew that these powers’ leaders were eager to use him as a trump card against the Spanish Empire in their geopolitical games. His contacts ranged from US Founding Fathers, British Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger and Viscount Melville to the Prussian king Friedrich II and the Russian empress Catherine II. He was a respected peer in the high society of the European “republic of letters” in the Age of Enlightenment. In the United States his friends belonged to the Federalist Party, which represents an interesting phenomenon since Federalists are usually viewed as being generally skeptical toward foreign revolutions. In Spanish America Miranda’s ideas received no support until 1810–1812, as his failed expedition clearly shows—this is an excellent example of the interplay between “evental history” (histoire évenémentielle) and the longue durée, demonstrating how fast and unpredictable radical historical change may be. In spite of this long political solitude, Miranda entered the Spanish American symbolic pantheon as the precursor of independence.
Until recently data on mortality by socioeconomic status were not available for the initial period of mortality increase in the former Soviet Union from 1965 to 1979. Newly discovered data from the Russian State Archive of Economics allow us to close this gap and to compare mortality trends in urban Latvia and several urban areas of Russia with the concentration of rising male mortality among manual workers already found in several eastern European countries. A similar trend appears in these data for rising mortality to concentrate among manual workers over time. Unfavorable trends in the life expectancy of the total population were largely driven by mortality increase among manual workers. Possible determinants of the pattern include a special type of economic growth in the USSR in the 1970s and 1980s associated with dominance of heavy industries and military sector, and low consumer goodsђ production, high prevalence of hard manual labor, massive ruralurban migrations and poor living conditions of new coming industrial workers, growing psychosocial stress and high prevalence of adverse health behaviors. These characteristics are discussed in the framework of an incomplete modernization and distinct health life styles in state socialist countries.
In the 1960s and 1970s, the countries of Central and Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union experienced an unanticipated stagnation in the process of mortality reduction that was accelerating in the west. This was followed by even starker fluctuations and overall declines in life expectancy during the 1980s and 1990s. We identify statistically the extent to which, since the 1990s, the countries of the post-communist region have converged as a group towards other regional or cross-regional geopolitical blocks, or whether there are now multiple steady-states (‘convergence clubs’) emerging among these countries. We apply a complex convergence club methodology, including a recursive analysis, to data on 30 OECD countries (including 11 post-communist countries) drawn from the Human Mortality Database and spanning the period 1959–2010. We find that, rather than converging uniformly on western life expectancy levels, the post-communist countries have diverged into multiple clubs, with the lowest seemingly stuck in low-level equilibria, while the best performers (e.g. Czech Republic) show signs of catching-up with the leading OECD countries. As the post-communist period has progressed, the group of transition countries themselves has become more heterogeneous and it is noticeable that distinctive gender and age patterns have emerged. We are the first to employ an empirical convergence club methodology to help understand the complex long-run patterns of life expectancy within the post-communist region, one of very few papers to situate such an analysis in the context of the OECD countries, and one of relatively few to interpret the dynamics over the long-term.
The article deals with three constitutional projects of Francisco de Miranda, distinguished Venezuelan. It is devoted to analyzes of the characteristics of the project of 1798, based on the experience of British constitutional law and public law of Ancient Rome. Special attention is focused on provisions of the projects of 1801 and 1808: on temporary public power during the war of colonies for independence from Spain and on federal government after the liberation. F.Miranda used for these projects a constitutional experience of many countries. One of the sources of his intellectual reflection was the constitution of Ancient Rome, the most important elements of which were people`s assembleis and magistracy. These institutes were adopted by F.Miranda and creatively impleamented according to specific conditions of Ibero-America.
Several approaches to the concept of fatherhood present in Western sociological tradition are analyzed and compared: biological determinism, social constructivism and biosocial theory. The problematics of fatherhood and men’s parental practices is marginalized in modern Russian social research devoted to family and this fact makes the traditional inequality in family relations, when the father’s role is considered secondary compared to that of mother, even stronger. However, in Western critical men’s studies several stages can be outlined: the development of “sex roles” paradigm (biological determinism), the emergence of the hegemonic masculinity concept, inter-disciplinary stage (biosocial theory). According to the approach of biological determinism, the role of a father is that of the patriarch, he continues the family line and serves as a model for his ascendants. Social constructivism looks into man’s functions in the family from the point of view of masculine pressure and establishing hegemony over a woman and children. Biosocial theory aims to unite the biological determinacy of fatherhood with social, cultural and personal context. It is shown that these approaches are directly connected with the level of the society development, marriage and family perceptions, the level of egality of gender order.