The arrival of Rafael Correa (Alianza País) to the Government of Ecuador in 2007 introduced some modifications that directly influence the configuration of the country's media system (Hallin and Mancini, 2004). Since then, the communication climate in Ecuador is marked by a confrontation between the president and the private media, which leads to high levels of polarization. This paper provides an approximation to the relationship between the Government and the media, based on the premise that, in the case of Ecuador, the first moment in the establishment of the agenda (McCombs, 2004) is determined by the political agenda, which can become a newsworthiness factor (Schulz, 1995). To do this, we conducted a content analysis of the Ecuadorian reference press (El Telégrafo -public- and El Comercio-privado-) and put it in relation with the political agenda, which we will study through the "Enlaces Ciudadanos" (accountability program of the Presidency of Ecuador) during the first semester of 2015. This analysis will allow us to identify the agendas of each one of the mentioned actors and check if there is a relationship between them.

This paper discusses the control that Congresses can exercise over bureaucratic bodies and the process of public policies. Several studies explain how the Parliament in the United States influences the administration, with the intention of ensuring that their interests and preferences are considered in decision making. The US example, which will be briefly addressed, demonstrates that the model of separation of powers that prevails in Latin America does not mean that the legislators should relinquish control over the bureaucracy. Afterwards, the cases of Peru and Chile are developed and it is exposed how the Congresses of both countries informally influence the bureaucracy and participate in the process of public policies, despite the existence of a strongly presidential constitutional design.

More than two decades ago, literature questioned the potential of connecting in real time and globally as a network society. A discussion in which we began to warn the processes of cultural hybridization, arising from the reception of new technologies, the role played by the media as spaces for re-knowledge and changes in sociabilities. However, no one could imagine then the omnicomprensivo power that the new type of social networks, of digital character, daily use, and as popular as they are today Facebook, Twitter or Whatsapp would acquire years later, nor their influence on the "ways of being in the world "of the subjects and their way of facing relationships with others. From this reality, the objective of this paper is to link and give meaning to a series of reflections on the development of a culture linked to the emergence of social networks and their political impact. The aim is to analyze the main psychosocial effects of the use and exposure of these networks in the ways of engaging politics. To do this, we start from two big hypotheses. On the one hand, the emergence of a sociability "showcase", characterized by a strong narcissism and an increase in vanity, as well as its naturalization and legitimacy through the intensive use of such networks. On the other hand, the generalization of a type of self-referential interaction that privileges the visual and reduces personal contact to the surface, minimizes complex dialogues and ends up generating, at times, a certain sense of emptiness and anxiety among its "users" . With a critical eye, the work is structured between the fears and the promises of this new world.

The purpose of this essay is to reflect and analyze  how the public administration can and should be in the long-term, for example at 35 years, and reach the arbitrary but "round" year of 2050 (hence the title game with 2050). The objective is threefold: on the one hand, it is nothing more than a mere divertimento of an exploratory nature about the contextual changes that are approaching and the tendencies of change that can or should be experienced by public institutions and apparatuses. It is a classroom fencing exercise that, without possessing a solid academic baggage, paradoxically remains an academic exercise due to its conceptual, speculative and theoretical scent. On the other hand, the second objective is much more palpable, and with a much more useful orientation aimed at politicians and professional managers, so that it provides them with a certain vision and strategic concern that allows them to take with more substance the most urgent decisions of the present. Trying to contribute, with modesty, to these current or immediate-future decisions is oriented in the sense of the evolution of events and history and not against all of them. Finally, the third objective is to encourage academics and practitioners to discuss the long-term public institutional future as an exercise that can not be delayed much longer if we want public management not to be left behind by the syncopated changes experienced by our society, economy, technology and even politics.

The NorSpaR Project aims to analyse the main public policy initiatives by which Norway and Spain cope with the new social and economic challenges derived from the so-called New Social Risks (NSR). Although both countries present significant differences in their institutional settings (such as Spanish EU membership), or its belonging to diverse welfare regimes types (Norway is generally included in the Nordic regime, while Spain is part of the Mediterranean one), both countries share a common interest in addressing the aforementioned challenges while maintaining social cohesion. In the last decade, governments in both countries have tried to respond to those challenges by reforming their labour markets, adapting their unemployment schemes, as well as their gender, family and long-term care policies. The analysis covered in this project includes three areas of public policy addressing NSR. First, dependency is one of the most daunting challenges for post-industrial societies experiencing population ageing and with an increasing number of frail people in need of care. This situation is forcing governments to rethink their long-term care policies. Second, family and gender public programs need to respond to the growing difficulties of families in reconciling professional and family life. Third, in the transition to a post-industrial order, and in a context of mass unemployment, social protection systems have a renewed prominence. Along with the so-called passive policies offering financial support to the unemployed, active labour market policies are geared to put people back into work. In our analysis we try to find answers to the following questions: What are the challenges that each of these policies have been trying to address in recent years? How have these policies evolved? What kinds of reforms have been implemented, and which ones have been neglected? Have the policy goals and targets of welfare programs been modified in any significant way? Have the policy tools (services, transfers, funding or models of provision) changed? To what extent have these policies been successful in coping with social and economic problems? To what extent a social demand in favour of these changes exist? What are the main political and social actors intervening as stakeholders in these policies? Finally, what are the major similarities and differences existing between the two countries? To what extent are there policy proposals that might easily travel between them? Could they foster mutually enriching exchanges of information?

These papers are part of a Special GIGAPP Working Paper Series aimed at disseminating the results of the NorSpaR Project (Coping with New Social Risk in Norway and Spain: Long-term policies, gender and family policies, and labour market and unemployment protection). This project has been financed by the EEA Grants through the Norwegian Embassy in Spain, and conducted by a group of Norwegian and Spanish researchers, including: Erling Barth, Inés Calzada, Svein Olav Daatland, Angie Gago, Arnlaug Leira, Pau Mari-Klose, Francisco Javier Moreno Fuentes, and Eloisa del Pino.

This article presents the results related to the ethical values ​​of the Ecuadorian journalists obtained from the Culture Journalistic Project of Ecuador (CPE). The main objective of this study is to determine the traditional and common ethical guidelines shared by the interviewees, since these principles define the responsibility, decisions, autonomy and professional practice of journalists. Professional ethics is one of the main factors that determine the level of professionalism of journalists and the professionalization of journalism; the regulation of the media market -based on the economic and business model of the media-; the self-regulation of the media -deontological codes-; State interventionism and the involvement of civil society in the communication process -participation and access to citizen information-. In this study, 31 in-depth interviews were conducted with active journalists from 6 national media, as well as a contextual analysis of the journalistic culture of Ecuador. The results show that the journalists interviewed in Ecuador are classified within the journalistic context, according to the perspectives proposed by Plaisance (2005) and Hanitzsch (2007) based on ethical ideologies, as eminently absolutist, tending to the situationism and, to a lesser extent, to the exceptionism.

The article discusses the local management stressing its revaluation as space of reproduction of capital and as mean to increase the social participation. The answer for this situation occurs through of two opposed models. One is aligned with the New Public Management and sustains goverments more efficient and entrepreneurs wielding their resources, addressing to endow the cities of more competitive edge. This conception stresses the relevance of the technical neutrality and the departure of politics. Another conception identified with the building of a new public sphere proposes models of participatory governance and social control, and involvement of citizens to build public policies and democratic management dedicated to criate a new organizational culture basen in organizational learning. A vision that sustains in the importance of political rationality as a way to orient the organizational management which should approach political leadership and public management in a collective process of changes in the public sector. The article follows to seek an approach between both conceptions highlighting the relevance of capacity of government to hinge the political, social and managerial actors to envisage the challenges to build a new institutional culture. Thus discusses the relation between the inside and outside faces of government as features of modernization of public management network. Concludes comparing both approaches to sugest a methodological guide seeking to approximate its premises to understand the management in local government. The proposed itinerary suggests an integrated managerial model by four dimensions: effiency, democracy, participation, and entrepreneurship to develop studies about the combined relation between strategics roles by cities and their systems of institutional fortification.

The objective of this work is to identify and develop, in a simple and structured way, the dimensions or subsystems that all public managers must take into account when talking about advanced management. They are identified as basic and classic elements that group the following organizations: a) objectives; b) administrative structure; c) human resources; d) economic resources; e) material and technological resources; f) the administrative process; g) power and conflict; and h) organizational culture. The document stresses on the characteristics of each dimension, of the complexities and interconnections between them, as well as of the paradoxes existing in their attention, offering some advice for an adequate managerial work. To this end, several checklists are offered that allow the interested reader to identify the most relevant variables, as well as make a diagnosis of the needs of the public organization, which can be useful for the institutional evaluation, for the identification of gaps, problems, pending issues or subject to improvement, as well as for monitoring the function of the public officer.

The main objective of this study is to assess whether the measures and actions implemented by the governors to improve the Brazilian public government model are contributing to raise the level of social control and transparency in public administration. We assume that the promotion of transparency and access to information is an essential measure for the strengthening of social control and democracy and, therefore, for the improvement of the quality of public management. It is a theoretical-empirical and bibliographical article, supported by the approaches of the theories of governance, neoinstitutional and agency. Based on literature, reports and legal regulations, we initially seek to identify the motivations that led to the adaptation and transfer of corporate governance experiences to the public sector. A field investigation was conducted to evaluate the quality of the information on public expenditures available through the transparency portals of the 200 most populated municipalities of the country. It concludes, finally, that there are still innumerable challenges and obstacles to be overcome in the sociocultural and institutional spheres. These difficulties are aggravated by deficiencies in skills as well as ethical and moral values ​​of the governors and politicians, essential to make viable a good public governance, increase transparency and increase social control in Brazil.

The purpose of this issue is to assert, as a research hypothesis, the peripheralization experienced by the Colombian armed conflict in recent years. As a consequence of the scope of the Democratic Security Policy and Plan Colombia, but also because of the particular impact of paramilitarism, a centrifugal tendency has been carried out in terms of public security but also of the violence derived from the armed conflict. This peripherialization poses an important challenge to the Colombian State, above all, because a hypothetical deactivation of the conflict with the FARC, and possibly with the ELN, within the current dialogues of Havana, will only be possible if it is advocated to overcome certain structural conditions of violence that, today, continue to be unresolved. In the absence of this circumstance, the sense of peace in Colombia may remain limited and confers on a significant part of its territory a logic in which the presence of irregular armed groups and the violent translation that this implies continues to be a constant away from any hint of overcoming.