In the autonomous State, genuine intergovernmental cooperation was developed for a long time outside the institutionalized bodies. Fundamentally, this was done in the political sphere, through negotiations between the heads of the main parties or in bilateral meetings of the President of the Government with that of each Autonomous Community. Cooperation through Intergovernmental Conferences was limited to matters of smaller scope, with Sectorial Conferences being the main instrument. After the last wave of reform of the State of Autonomies, principles and instruments of cooperation were consecrated in the Reformed Statutes and two new Intergovernmental Conferences were institutionalized at the highest level: the Conference of Presidents, in the vertical scope, and the Conference of the Governments of the Autonomous Communities, in the horizontal. This paper analyzes the results of intergovernmental cooperation in Spain, especially that carried out through the new intergovernmental conferences, as well as the challenges to overcome for its consolidation.

The objective of this work is to evaluate the public tax policies of the municipalities of Minas Gerais in 2010, based on the resources coming from the tax and budget revenues that are used in public policies, together with the work of fiscal management, analyzing the influence of these factors in the Firjan Development Index of mining municipalities. When the cluster analysis was carried out, a relationship was verified between the municipalities that have a high volume of tax and budgetary income, as well as a high rate of fiscal management, with the social development index. The importance of taxes for mining municipalities was observed, since these constitute part of the resources available for the financing of strategic areas for social development.

Two years ago I published a Working Paper in this same collection of Studies / Working Papers of the GIGAPP: "The Administration that is expected after the crisis" (WP-2011-02). The intention of this document was to predict the impact of the acute and prolonged economic crisis on public administrations in Spain. Two years have passed since I presented these reflections, and this paper's mission is to highlight and reflect on what has already happened. It is a partial analysis made in the heat of the events and, therefore, lacks the consistency of the academic study elaborated with a broader perspective that only allows the rest granted by time. The first conclusion is that, unfortunately, the hypotheses included in the previous paper are being fulfilled in general terms, although with some nuances that should be highlighted as a partial balance. Faced with the deep economic crisis, the political, social and institutional crises have come to accompany us for a long time. As an axis of the proposals, five critical issues are selected for institutional renewal and modernization of public administrations: a) renew the selection processes of public employees to preserve the principles of equality, capacity and merit and the rest of the large proposals I comment them synthetically as apostilles; b) a statute of the professional public address; c) transparency; d) a refocusing of information technologies; e) improve the governance systems of public-private partnerships. At the end of the document there is a list with all the items, some of great importance and others more instrumental, which should be addressed by an administrative reform if it aspires to be complete.

The present work characterizes the social protest in Chile between the years 2006-2011. After a registration and review of the protest actions that took place around the student, mapuche and environmental conflict, its scope and intensity (number of days and number of protest actions) is analyzed, the repertoire of action deployed around each axis of conflict and its geographical location, pointing out some elements of continuity and rupture over time, as well as differences and similarities between the protest movements. Finally, some to be developed areas of analysis are outlined within the framework of an ongoing research program.

Among the examples of microcredit in Brazil, the Oriented Productive Microcredit Program of Banco del Nordeste, the CrediAmigo Program, stands out. This proposal seeks to evaluate the impacts of the CrediAmigo Program on the perception of the managers, credit advisors and / or coordinators and beneficiaries, in municipalities in northern Minas Gerais. This proposal stands out for studying one of the poor regions of Brazil, which needs external stimuli to develop, in addition to field research with different social actors of CrediAmigo. Through content analysis, this study identified the positive effects of microcredit, consistent with the theory, considering it an instrument capable of strengthening ventures and raising the income of beneficiary families, even identifying an improvement in the quality of life.

In this article, we carry out, in the first place, a critical and contextualized review of the literature produced in the academic field of Electronic Participation in recent years, presenting its main proposals and analyzing its strengths and weaknesses. Later we present a series of basic concepts that allow us to understand the essential aspects of digital participation: what is (e) Participation, what are its characteristics, dynamics, justification and implications.

In this paper we explore the idea that talented migrants can assist in the development and growth of their economies of origin through brain-circulation dynamics, linking the developed world where they live and developing homelands they (or their ancestors in the case of later-generation diasporans) left behind. Depending on the roles these talented people play in the organizational (and institutional) environment at both ends of the migratory trail, different alternatives of diaspora-led initiatives are available to them. When these roles are attached to the private sector, the introduction of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiatives piggybacking preexisting diaspora tools (such as talent networks, open migration chains, diaspora-oriented institutions, etc.) might be the more appropriate and efficient channels.

The decrease in the population of primary school age is an irreversible trend that poses important challenges for the authorities, institutions and policies that govern the educational system in Mexico. This fact offers a scenario in which the teachers will foreseeably face groups of less numerous students, facilitating a lightening of the teachers' workloads, as well as a greater interaction of these with their students. Common sense suggests that these two factors can benefit school performance. However, international experiences show that the above does not necessarily occur automatically. The results in this regard suggest that the decrease in the size of the classes must be accompanied by a set of public policy measures that favor the teaching and learning process. This paper seeks to contribute to the debate on class size as a conditioning factor of quality and school performance in Mexico, but above all, provide elements for the design and implementation of a public policy aimed at making the decrease in the number of students per group, an opportunity to improve educational quality.

Although the background of the concept of "social cohesion" refers to classical sociology, it has been in the last three decades when the term has gained a new impulse, being rethought as an axis of analysis and orientation in the field of public policies, especially regarding the policies of the European Union. Currently, both the definition and the scope of application of social cohesion has become a source of debate since its insertion in Latin America, where the context of violence, exclusion and the highest levels of economic inequality in the world have raised new challenges and critical positions towards the application of social cohesion policies and even towards the use of the term itself.

Given the growing interest of governments and public administrations to develop citizen participation initiatives, this article provides an approach to some of the possible mechanisms for incorporating citizens into political and public decisions. Information and Communication Technologies can bring advantages to participatory processes to streamline and disseminate them; but they can also limit participation to those who do not access the Internet. Since we live immersed in a society in which access to information and knowledge can be carried out through multiple channels, it is recommended that citizen participation initiatives be designed from an integral perspective, taking into account both virtual and on-site participation mechanisms.