Uruguay and Mexico have both passed laws aiming to professionalise the public sector bureaucracy according to what might be considered ‘second generation’ reform principles. They did so under what might initially have seemed to be politically unpropitious circumstances. The reforms might have been vetoed by interests that feared that they would lose out from the changes, but were not. They might have been blocked by conditions of minority presidentialism, but were not. This article seeks to explain the successful passing of this reform legislation. Framing issues played a significant role in reducing opposition. Notably important was the way in which the reforms were presented, and specifically the ability of their proponents to avoid presenting them as market-friendly reforms. The political context also provided the reformers with arguments that in the end proved persuasive.

This article studies the impact of neoliberal globalisation on the relative strength of different social actors and on the relations between these actors and the state in Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic. In particular, the article analyses the responses of large domestic capitalists to the new global environment and to the new policies implemented, as well as the effect of these policies on public servants (who have traditionally been an influential political force, at least in Costa Rica). The paper makes two basic claims. First, globalisation has had some common effects on the politico-economic structures of Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic, despite the vastly different historical trajectory of state–society relations in the two countries. In both countries, there has been an increasing concentration and financialisation of capital and a weakening of the state bureaucracy. Second, these changes in the politico-economic structure have imposed new, country-specific constraints for the consolidation of the neoliberal economic model, signalling the need to introduce institutional reforms in the near future.

This article gives an account of the developments in the Dominican Republic's economy from the 1990s boom to the crisis of the new millennium, focusing on the monetary and exchange rate dynamics behind that transition. It is argued that the liberalisation of interest rates in the 1990s, together with an appreciated real exchange rate and weak bank supervision, led to the dollarisation of the banking system. These and other structural imbalances exacerbated the impact of a series of adverse shocks on the economy at the beginning of the millennium, including a banking crisis costing approximately 20 per cent of gross domestic product in 2003.

The issue of sovereignty has historically figured prominently in Latin American political discourse. From Simón Bolívar to Benito Juárez in the nineteenth century, to Juan Domingo Perón and Salvador Allende in the twentieth, to Fidel Castro and Hugo Chávez today, sovereignty and its corollary, the non-intervention principle, have been prominent among the region's watchwords. In the late 1950s a Mexican diplomat declared that ‘intransigent non-intervention’ was the ‘cornerstone of the Inter-American system’. Sometimes imbued with racialist elements, as in José E. Rodó's claim that Latin America had ‘an inheritance of race, a great ethnic tradition to maintain’, or in the recent claim by a Venezuelan general that the Latin American defence of sovereignty is ‘part of the legacy which our aboriginal ancestors have passed on to us through chromosomes’, the discourse on sovereignty and non-intervention has become a Latin American trademark.

Cuba–Soviet relations are examined in the period that Mikhail Gorbachev was leader of the Soviet Union, focusing on the Cuban perception of the effects of the Soviet reforms on the relationship, in the light of the campaign of rectification of errors. It is concluded that the Cuban leadership kept a surprisingly united front in this period; the year 1989 and repercussions of the August 1991 coup were vital; but the Cuban reaction was not more critical due to diplomatic constraints and the hope that a semblance of the relationship could continue, despite the situation within the Soviet Union.

Human rights are the focus of research and teaching in multiple fields including law, philosophy, political science, sociology, anthropology, economics, psychology, history, literature and public health. Human rights are also the focus of advocacy and on-the-ground investigation by activists affiliated with nongovernmental organisations (NGOs), labour unions and social movements. Scholars interested in rights-based issues thus often face a dual challenge: that of crossing disciplinary boundaries in order to explore human rights questions, and that of bridging the academic-practitioner divide.