Neoliberalism conceives of democracy in capitalist terms, deprived of its utopic and normative dimensions in the name of the market and efficiency. The resulting political model, restricted and neoconservative in nature, depoliticizes the concept of the citizen, negates state intervention, narrows the political environment, frees the economy from political interventions and deteriorates the meaning and reaching of the public sphere. Given this problematic, the article analyzes the plausibility of distinct theoretical reflections on democracy from a postliberal (Rawls), socialist (Habermas) and postsocialist perspective, based upon the Frankfurt School’s third generation discussions of radical democracy, Negri and Hardt’s analyses of real democracy, postmodern republicanism’s disputatory democracy, and Touraine’s liberation democracy. In this vein, the article also identifies democracy’s “escape points” by examining this model’s emancipatory potential through authors such as Agamben, Zizek and Virno.

Neoliberal democracy --- postliberal democracy --- deliberative democracy --- radical democracy --- real democracy --- disputatory democracy.

The author provides an overview about the field of international political economy (IPE) along metatheoretical lines. The IPE communities in the United States and Western Europe exhibit more differences than commonalities in their ontological, epistemological and methodological assumptions. While the U.S. perspective is solidly based on a materialist ontology, methodological individualism, and neo-positivism as its epistemological foundation, the European IPE community is considerably more heterogeneous in its theoretical, epistemological and methodological approaches. The article ends with a view towards the future introducing three possible scenarios for the IPE sub-discipline.

International political economy --- philosophy of science --- United States --- Western Europe

The objective of this article is to examine a series of issues related to contemporary research about the nation. The text is divided into four sections. The first section reviews two types of prevalent questions about the nation. Second, the debate about the relationship between elites and subalterns in the construction of this kind of political community and the methodological problems it entails is discussed. Third, a series of authors are analyzed to illustrate that nation building implies a specific type of political domination. The fourth and final section illustrates the relationship that exists between nation building and emotional repertories.

Nation --- elites --- subalterns --- methodology --- political domination

This article offers a panoramic view of what it is commonly known in the social sciences as “qualitative research”. It could well be considered an introduction, as it simply poses questions and points to areas of future research. The text begins with a general discussion on the meaning of qualitative research, based upon the concept of paradigm, and analyzes its genesis and the reason of its expansion in the last two decades of the twentieth century. The author affirms that it is a difficult and conflicting expansion and, that its legitimacy is far from assured: opposition to this approach, in particular by academic positivism, continues to present a difficult barrier to overcome, despite contemporary voices of integration or dialogue. Subsequently, the article discusses qualitative analysis’ epistemological status and the elements that distinguish it from other conceptions of research. The paper concludes with an interpretative proposal that differs from this entire intellectual project in the social sciences: making use of Bourdieu, it opens a path to analyzing this phenomenon more as the product of games within a social field than as an exclusively epistemological rebellion.

Epistemology --- hermeneutics --- qualitative methods --- paradigms --- positivism.

This article explores a series of recent theoretical contributions on the topic of security. Currently, the implementation of practices, processes and political rationalities that aim to administer, regulate and decide over human life, prove to be a constitutive part of the exercise of the political in all of its forms. Taking as a point of departure, the works of philosophers Michel Foucault and Giorgio Agamben within the field of so-called biopolitics, this article briefly reviews some recent publications dealing with current security matters such as the configuration of spaces of exception (detention centers, special economic zones, tourist resorts and refugee camps) and the implementation of biopolitical techniques and technologies in the treatment of issues such as immigration processes and pandemics. The article ends with some reflections on the implicit logic within this model of security.

Security --- biopolitics --- state of exception --- immunity --- autoimmunity --- democracy.