Cooperation on institutional reform
and social policies

Working papers

Working Paper No. 24: Social policies in Cuba: achievements and challenges for the Public Administration

Dra. C. Anicia García Álvarez, Univ. Habana / Dra. C. Betsy Anaya Cruz, Univ. Habana, Cuba - 30-09-2020

Social services have been a high priority in the Cuban socioeconomic project. However, the difficulties in achieving the purposes of economic development of the country systematically put in tension the advance in those achievements and even their maintenance. This work purpose is to analyse the challenges faced by the Cuban public administration in the context of the definition and construction of a new model of economic and social development.

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Working Paper No. 23: Accessibility to food in Cuba: current situation and challenges

Dra. C. Anicia García Álvarez, Univ. Habana / Dra. C. Betsy Anaya Cruz, Univ. Habana, Cuba - 30-09-2020

Cuba exhibits satisfactory average indicators of food consumption in relation to nutritional recommendations. However, these results do not reflect the complexity of the problem of food. The present work aims to determine the difficulties to the access to food in Cuba, what are its main features and consequences, and what can be done to mitigate tensions about it.

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Working Paper No. 22. The stable change in Cuba after the constitutional referendum

Francisco Sánchez, Director del Instituto de Iberoamérica de la Universidad de Salamanca - 17-09-2020

The chapter explains that Cuba's power group, the dominant coalition, has not been fractured due to the existence of a series of formal and informal institutions that allow it to maintain real and effective control. Three aspects are key to support the status quo: 1) the control exercised by the Revolutionary Armed Forces during, before and after the process of handover of power; 2) the centrality of the Cuban Communist Party as a space of power and coordination; and 3) the political-technocratic elite that does not question the essence of the regime, assuming and defending the Revolution as the basis of legitimacy.

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Working Paper No. 21. The difficulties of institutional change in Cuba

José Antonio Alonso, Catedrático Econ. Apl.,UCM, Pavel Vidal, Prof. Asoc. Univ. Javeriana de Cali - 17-09-2020

This work analyzes the reasons that explain the institutional change in Cuba. Institutional rigidity does not correspond to the change in the ways of life of the Cuban population. Therefore, in Cuba there is a conflict between the viscosity of formal institutions and the fluidity of informal institutions. To analyze this conflict and the inertia of the formal institutions, a political economy approach is adopted, trying to identify the conflict of interests of different social sectors in favor and against this process.

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Working Paper No. 20. he 2019 Cuban Constitution and socialist constitutionalism: realities and challenges.

José Chofre-Sirvent, Área de Derecho Constitucional, Facultad de Derecho, Universidad de Alicante jo - 17-09-2020

The Cuban Constitution responds to the doctrine and legal technique of socialist constitutionalism. And this is the paradigm of analysis. There are no comparisons with other types of constitutionalism, because it would lead to a useless and rhetorical task. The fundamental objective of this work is to verify the contrast between the norm and reality, between the formal constitution and the material constitution, to check, tentatively and as far as possible, how the political, social and economic forces determine, or could condition, the provisions of the letter of the Constitution.

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Working Paper No. 19. Habitat management in Old Havana: Housing cooperatives as an urban Resilience mechanism for comprehensive rehabilitation and sustainable tourism

Mireia Carrasco Ferri, Arquitecta; María Jiménez Campos, Arquitecta - 14-09-2020

The Habaneras housing cooperatives propose to regulate the processes of community self-construction through a productive housing model, to protect the tangible and intangible heritage of Old Havana. The cooperative inhabits -creates a local community network-, builds -rehabilitates the housing fund- and produces -generates services for public use-, ensuring a living and resilient city center.

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Working Paper No. 18. The reception of international treaties in Cuba according the 2019 Constitution

Dra. Carmen Antón Guardiola, Profesora de Derecho Internacional Público y Relaciones Internacionales - 14-09-2020

This work addresses the complex issue of the relations between international law and internal law. After a brief reference to the theoretical dimension, we will analyze, from the legal-positive dimension, the provisions of the 2019 Cuban Constitution to determine the procedure for receiving international treaties in Cuban Legal System and identify their dualistic or monistic nature.

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Working Paper No. 17. Cuban institutional reform and the crossroads of inequality in the 21st century.

Rosa María Voghon Hernández, Investigadora independiente. - 24-07-2020

The objective of this paper is to analyze the processes of political conflict associated with the reinforcement of patterns of inequality in Cuban reality, taking as a focus the most recent changes brought about by the reform begun in 2011. The text is based on the review official documents, journalistic, national and foreign investigations, as well as in the investigations carried out by the author on these issues.

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Working Paper No. 16. Being/becoming professional: emerging work practices and the politics of cultural heritage in light of legislative change in Cuba. (An Etnographic approach)

Ruxandra Ana, Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology, University of Warsaw - 24-07-2020

Dance teaching aimed at international tourists is a relatively new type of private business in Cuba, which creates the premises for capitalizing on cultural heritage both on the island and outside of it, while revealing newly emerging work practices and attitudes towards work. In this new context, tensions arise between notions of ‘professionalism’ defined from the point of view of the Cuban state and its institutions that specialize in dance education, on the one hand, and private businesses, on the other, where ideas of market, competitiveness and personal branding put forward new understandings of what it means to be professional.

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Workging Paper No. 15. Multiple economies and daily resistance in Cuba: A transition from below

Louis Thiemann; Claudia Mare - 24-07-2020

After three decades of transition, the Cuban economy is defined by dynamics between the economies imposed by the State and the daily resistance generated ‘from below’. Although the latter lack legal and statistical representation, they can be studied through the hidden transcripts (Scott, 1985) of their participants. The article applies contemporary concepts such as multiple economies, infra-politics and subalternity to the Cuban case.

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Working Paper No. 14. “Who is going to take care of me?” Aging and care regime in Cuba. A challenge for social policy reforms.

Blandine Destremau , Directora de Investigación en el Centro Nacional de Investigación Científica de - 24-07-2020

Cuba is characterized by a very advanced level of aging. Based on an ethnographic survey, I will show that the moral ideal of caring for the elderly in the home is at odds with reduced fertility, the emancipation of women, and outflows of emigration. Resolving the care crisis constitutes a major challenge for social policy reforms.

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Working Paper No. 13. "Neither plan nor market". Problems and coherence of the gradualist reform approach

Marcel Kunzmann, Freie Universität Berlin, Institute of Latin American Studies - 16-07-2020

The role of plan and market were always topic of constant discussion and change since the 1959 Cuban Revolution. The 2011 adopted reform program, amended in the following party congress and enshrined into the 2019 constitution, did mark one of the main turning points during the recent theoretical reassessment of the country’s socialist model. This paper aims to take a fresh look at the ongoing debate about the role of plan and market institutions in Cuba and the current state of SOE reform.

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Working Paper No. 12. Deliberation in the process of constitutional reform: Cuba in comparative context

Yanina Welp, Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy, Graduate Institute - 15-07-2020

This work analyses the Cuban constituent participatory process by confronting it with 10 experiences of other Latin American cases identified since 1976. In doing so, I propose a set of basic criteria to be met in order for these participatory experiences to be deemed fair and democratic, with a focus on the mechanism of participation and the method of processing the contents generated.

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Working Paper No. 11. Governance challenges in contemporary Cuba: social policies and the UN's sustainable development goals

Laurence Whitehead - 08-07-2020

Cuba’s social policies are highly distinctive. They form an integral package developed over many decades. The UN’s Sustainable Development Goals for 2030 provide a relevant external yardstick that fits quite well with Havana’s current plans. But substantial further governance innovations would be required to bring the two together. The Díaz-Canel administration needs an attractive and unifying project, and a reinvigorated social policy agenda could provide the best option.

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