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The paper aims to consider system and control ideas which are useful in analysing problems in human science.

Three arts of dictatorships are considered, namely: dictatorship in a developing country, dictatorship in a developed country and the global dictatorship. The conditions leading to these dictatorships are explained.

Two arts of democracies are discussed and the common parameters of democracies and dictatorships are determined. In all the above, the position of the people is discussed.

An ideal democracy is suggested which can be considered as a goal for a better world and as reference for evaluation.

Social movements experience periods of intense activity and periods of abeyance, when collective action is very weak because of an inhospitable political climate. Non-democracies are extreme cases of hostile political environments for social movements. Drawing on a case study of the women’s movement in Franco’s Spain (mid-1930s to 1975) based on an analysis of published documents and 17 interviews, this paper argues that some non-democracies force social movements that existed prior to dictatorships into a period of abeyance and shape collective organizing in terms of location, goals, and repertoire of activities. Some social movements under prolonged non-democratic rule manage to link and transmit the aims, repertoire of activities, and collective identity of pre-dictatorship activists to those of post-dictatorship activists. This occurs mainly through cultural activities.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the impact of governance structures in defining the relationship between profits and leverage.

The paper uses the standard design used by Fama and French (2002) and employs it under different governance structures. It is the first to identify the endogenous nature of the relationship between profits and leverage, compounded by the endogeneity of governance. The paper uses the instrumental variable (IV) technique to control for endogeneity and recommends a novel approach to control for multiple endogenous regressors.

The results demonstrate that firms operating under good governance verify the predictions of the trade-off theory of capital structure and that the evidence of negative relation in the literature is a subset of management inefficiency. The results are consistent after controlling for endogeneity and are robust to alternative iteration of governance. The activity in debt issuance and retirement supports the conclusion that firms with good governance structures actively seek an optimal capital structure corresponding to profits.

This study adds value to existing literature. It is the first to identify the importance of governance in defining the relationship between profits and leverage. It recognizes unaccounted endogeneity concerns and employs an inspired IV approach to control for feedback from multiple endogenous regressors. Evidence for capital structure adjustment by firms with good governance is also substantiated. Lastly, the first unqualified evidence for the trade-off model is provided.

In 1983, democratic elections ended a seven‐year military dictatorship in Argentina, bringing the end of a violent military dictatorship and its campaign to eliminate what it labelled ‘subversive elements’ within Argentine society. Alongside the regime’s human victims, information and archives also suffered severely. Document raids of social organisations were common, and the military junta worked to actively destroy any records it deemed threatening or simply inappropriate. When civilians returned to power, they moved to initiate wide‐spread educational reforms, many of which focused on the development of libraries and archives. This article examines information repositories ‐ archives, libraries, and museums ‐ as small organisations and institutions empowered by the new civilian administration to emerge as prominent players in Argentina’s democratic transition.

After World War II, an educational modernization process gained ground worldwide. International organizations such as UNESCO began to play a key role in the creation, development and dissemination of a new educational vision in different countries. This article examines the origin and development of this modernization process under the dictatorship of Franco. More specifically, we will show how the adoption of this conception in Spain must be understood from the perspective of the interaction between UNESCO and Franco's regime, and how the policies of the dictatorship converged with the proposals suggested by this international organization. Our principal argument is that the educational policies carried out in Spain throughout the second half of the 20th century can be better understood when inserted into a transnational perspective in education.

This article uses documents from archives that until now were unpublished or scarcely known. We have also analyzed materials published in the preeminent educational journals of the dictatorship, such as the Revista de Educación, Revista Española de Pedagogía, Bordón and Vida escolar, as well as documents published by the Spanish Ministry of National Education.

Franco's dictatorship built an educational narrative closely aligned with proposals put forward by UNESCO on educational planning after World War II. The educational policies created by the dictatorship were related to the new ideas that strove to link the educational system with economic and social development.

This article is inspired by a transnational history of education perspective. On the one hand, it traces the origins of educational modernization under Franco's regime, which represented a technocratic vision of education that is best understood as a result of the impact that international organizations had in the second half of the 20th century. On the other hand, it follows the intensifying relationship between the dictatorship and the educational ideas launched by UNESCO. Both aspects are little known and studied in Spain.

The purpose of this paper is to describe a learning study with a complex object of learning – democracy.

The study consists of four research lessons in four different classes in grade 6. In the study two teachers, 78 students and two researchers participated. In the first lesson (A) 21 students participated, in the second class (B) 17, in the third class (C) 21 and in the last lesson (D) 19 students. The research lessons were 80 minutes each, designed based on variation. The students took a pre-test before the lesson and a post-test after.

The results show the relationship between the pattern of variation used by the teacher during the lesson and students’ learning outcome. In lesson A contrast was used between democracy and dictatorship. In lesson B the aspects were varied due to the discussions between the teacher and the students that resulted in less focus on the whole perspective. The design of lesson C offered students a sequential presentation of the aspects, the concepts were handled separately and simultaneity was not used. In lesson D the whole was in focus during the entire lesson and the aspects were presented simultaneously in relation to the whole. Group A's increased at the test scores was 63 per cent, B 32 per cent, C 29 per cent and D 91 per cent.

The results points at using learning study with complex objects of learning requires offering the relationship between aspects of the phenomenon presented by a background of the meaning of the concept develop the students’ understanding.

Why are some of the municipalities located on the most dynamic, populous and productive region of a nation, also the poorest of the nation? Why after decades of being at the center of national development policies, the municipalities of Greater Buenos Aires are still suffering some of the worst development indicators of the Argentina?