In this article, we discuss the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic as a biopolitical challenge that – along the lines of the contemporary academic debate on biopower – may be approached through the concepts of sovereignty and governmentality. Within this general framework, the authors look at the challenges Russia faces due to the corona crisis from the viewpoint of domestic transformations within the ruling regime, mainly focusing on center – periphery relations as a core element of the power structure in Russia that demands a stronger emphasis on governmentality. We outline several forms of regions’ distancing from the federal center: digital empowerment, the resistance of the North, and the demand for "people’s governors". Our main conclusion is that the relative administrative autonomy obtained by the regions reflects the ongoing process of decentralization of the Russian political system which will affect the structural characteristics of Russian federalism in the future.
The matter of the 'original sin', the inability to borrow abroad in domestic currency, came to the centre of the academic discussion after the dramatic episodes in Asia, Russia and Latin America. According to this international framework, this paper is an empirical analysis of 'original sin' for six Latin American countries based on the index (OSIN3) developed by Haussmann and Panizza (2003). This paper finds that the situation for some countries have been improving reflecting a reduction of the index. This fact could be related to recent economic policies related to an 'abstinence' rather than 'redemption', an attitude seen as a response to the debt crisis. Finally, the paper focuses on possible policy alternatives that could be adopted to overcome the 'original sin' phenomenon it includes North-South and South-South cooperation and a multilateral arrangement. However, such alternatives are limited to feasibility mainly due to the turbulent political and economic scenario in the region.
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