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What a subject!: political institutions

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The State is a modern political institution. But before its emergence, other institutions were in charge of regulating social conflict. In my major, I have had not one but three subjects on political institutions: Power, Politics and Government, Evolution of Institutions I and Evolution of Institutions II. Since I was a child I have been very interested in universal history and especially in political history. Political institutions and their development are the combination of my interests. I have learned, for example, that Athenian democracy was direct, but limited to a minority of people. I have also learned that feudalism is not a dark period, but one where fragmentation of political power reigned, which was confused with the Catholic Church's power. But definitely, what interested me the most was that the modern state is the result of the bourgeoisie's struggle to conquer power for its own benefit, and it had been trying to do so since the 12th century. It may at first look...

Website I enjoy visiting

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Since I have been studying Political Science, a website that has helped me a lot is SERVEL (www. https://historico.servel.cl/). It is the official website of the Electoral Service's historical registry and contains all the electoral information since the return to democracy. A friend told me thath it was an interesting page to find electoral data. It has helped me a lot to understand the changes in the party system, specially with the 2017 parliamentary elections. It has also helped me to understand the process of weakening of the traditional parties, tracking the loss of votes from many elections. For political science, this data is very important, because it allows to find evidence of voters' preferences at a specific time. I like this website because it is easy to use, it is very intuitive and you can see the percentages of participation, the vote by party and by coalition. For the plebiscite and the last electiones, I have used it a lot! I reccomend the SERVEL website to fi...

HOW CAN POLITICAL SCIENCE MAKE THE WORLD A BETTER PLACE

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Political Science is a discipline that studies political phenomena. Although it may seem very academic, it has practical implications because these phenomena generate consequences on the people of the States. Topics such as democracies, dictatorships, human and social rights, citizen participation or constituent process are very important for political science, because it studies the cases where the best and worst experiences are currently concentrated. Particularly, as in Chile we are in the middle of a constituent process, political science could contribute a lot to build a more democratic, inclusive and participatory constitution. I hope to be able to contribute in the future to analyze the consequences that the new constitution will  bring to the people of Chile, researching if it really helped to improve their quality of life or not. Anyway, as a militant of a political party, political science can help me to think public policies to be presented by Convergencia Social in the ...

A photo and its story

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In 2016, I participated in a Latin American encounter of anti-imperialist youth, in Bolivia. The encounter was held in Villa Tunari, in the bolivian amazon. To get there I had to take a plane from Santiago to La Paz. That was the easiest part. Then, from La Paz to Villa Tunari I had to travel by bus and by car, via Cochabamba. On the trip to Villa Tunari, I met the socialist Bolivia that I had longed to know for years. In Tunari I lived with a humid heat between incessant tropical rains. I spent a large parte of the encounter eating bananas, which were very popular due to humidity and the heat of the area. For that, they were rhe cheapest alternative to eat.  This foto was taken on the last day of the encounter. We were invited to visit a local park. In the middle of jungle, we reached one of the Amazon River's tributaries. In the meanwhile, we could see many animals, such as tapirs, exotic birds and monkeys. There was a very funny monkey who followed us for a long time. After a lo...

My favourite meal

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Hello, everyone!  My favourite meal is pasta, spaghetti with bolognese sauce, in specific. The key is in the sauce. I cook it with celery, red pepper, onion, garlic, oregano and laurel leaf, mixing with the meat’s flavour. To do this noodles, first you need boiling water in a cooking pot. Here we put the spaghetti for 10 minutes. In the meanwhile, we have to fry the onion, the red pepper, the celery and the oregano. Add salt to taste. After that I put the ground beef and mix. Then, I put in the tomato sauce and wait 5 minutes. After the spaghetti and the bolognese sauce is ready, we serve the dish. I love this meal because it is very tasty and it’s so easy to cook. In 30 minutes you can have lunch. Despite this, I try other dishes during the week, because I know that eating a lot of pasta is detrimental to my health. 

My favourite piece of technology

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Hello there! Today I was remembering when I was 12 years old and my dad gave me my first cellphone. It was very small, and it has a few apps, like camera, radio and 2 games. It also had an analog keyboard and if I want to type a text I had to take a lot of my time.  Now, the cellphone is like a partner to me. I can use it to connect to my classes, to response mails and messages I received from teachers and classmates, and many other things that isn’t related with the university. For example, the cellphone helps me to cook, because I can find recipes when I don’t know what to cook for lunch.  The cellphone helps me a lot in the day. Without it, it's possible that I can't connect to my classes, or I can't know what to cook some days neither. I recommend use it, because it's makes life much easier and it's so useful. To watch a movie, to listen a song, to read a paper, to call friends or just to look for some information you don't know, cellphones helps a lot w...

Why did I choose my major?

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 I choose my major because I am very interested in the political phenomena. But this decision is recent. In my childhood all I want to be was a pokemon master and to can capture all pokemon. Later, when I was a teenager, I debated myself between architecture, design, teory and history of art and law. Unfortunately, I decided studied law for a few years until I make my new decision: to study political science.  The political parties and the social movilization are things that I've been interested since I was in the school. Now, I can learn about the scientific method applied on social science and I can read specialized literature. It's been a difficults years, because the covid-19 pandemic, but although that I can learn a little in the online mode.