{"id":3460,"date":"2026-04-04T12:48:33","date_gmt":"2026-04-04T12:48:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.backerinlaw.com\/Site\/?page_id=3460"},"modified":"2026-04-04T12:58:51","modified_gmt":"2026-04-04T12:58:51","slug":"2026-published-articles","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.backerinlaw.com\/Site\/2026-published-articles\/","title":{"rendered":"2026 Published Articles"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Larry Cat\u00e1 Backer, \u201cCuba and the Constitution of a Stable State of Misery: Ideology, Economic Policy, and Popular Discipline, <em>Penn State Journal of Law &amp; International Affairs<\/em> 13(2):1-84 (2025)<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Download <a href=\"https:\/\/www.backerinlaw.com\/Site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Backer_ProceedingsPaper_LegalFoundations_ASCE2025_v1.pdf\" data-type=\"link\" data-id=\"https:\/\/www.backerinlaw.com\/Site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Backer_ProceedingsPaper_LegalFoundations_ASCE2025_v1.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">HERE<\/a>; OR Access HERE. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>ABSTRACT: Cuba is certainly in transition. But that means very different things to groups competing to drive transition. The resulting dissonance, guided by sometimes incompatible formative premises, complicates the challenge of transition, its forms, where that transition leads, and what may be necessary. Whatever the form and trajectories of transition, it is clear that transition will require substantial attention to the construction of aligned institutional-legal foundations. The purpose of these remarks is to consider the&nbsp; form and challenges of developing robust institutional-legal foundations in the Cuban context.&nbsp; It is organized in five parts.&nbsp; After the introduction the remarks first considers conceptual starting points&#8211;the importance of the development and choice of political-economic models as a predicate for the construction of robust institutional-legal foundations. It is divided into two parts, the first focusing on normative political orders, and the second examining institutional-legal orders. The remarks then considers two starting points of analysis. The first situates the Cuban political-economic model as a conceptual baseline. The second the current state of&nbsp; institutional-legal foundations in Cuba. The remarks then articulates the context in which the challenge of transition appears in contemporary Cuba\u2014the&nbsp; end of the long arc of the Cuba revolutionary regime. That brings the remarks to the heart of the matter: what the future can bring. This is divided into several organizing-normative questions: (a) Who is to make decisions about transitioning?;&nbsp; (b) What ideological political economic model is to serve as the basis of post-revolutionary institutional-law building?; (c) Through which institutional actors ought this ideological political-economic model be&nbsp; realized?; (d) What timeline is to be chosen to develop and implement this transition?; and (e) The Marie Kondo moment\u2014what of the present system is to be kept and what is to be discarded or repurposed?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>RETURN TO <a href=\"https:\/\/www.backerinlaw.com\/Site\/welcome\/publications-3\/publications\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">PUBLICATIONS PAGE<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>RETURN TO <a href=\"https:\/\/backerinlaw.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">HOMEPAGE<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Larry Cat\u00e1 Backer, \u201cCuba and the Constitution of a Stable State of Misery: Ideology, Economic Policy, and Popular Discipline, Penn State Journal of Law &amp; International Affairs 13(2):1-84 (2025) Download HERE; OR Access HERE. ABSTRACT: Cuba is certainly in transition. But that means very different things to groups competing to drive transition. The resulting dissonance, &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.backerinlaw.com\/Site\/2026-published-articles\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;2026 Published Articles&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3462,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-3460","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backerinlaw.com\/Site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3460","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backerinlaw.com\/Site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backerinlaw.com\/Site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backerinlaw.com\/Site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backerinlaw.com\/Site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3460"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.backerinlaw.com\/Site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3460\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3469,"href":"https:\/\/www.backerinlaw.com\/Site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3460\/revisions\/3469"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backerinlaw.com\/Site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3462"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backerinlaw.com\/Site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3460"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}