The aim of this article is to investigate the institutionalisation of the state Public Defender’s Offices before and after the reform that granted independence and new functions to the Public Defender’s Offices in Brazil. We attempt to understand these processes based on theories of judicial empowerment (ideational and governance perspectives), analyse them in the Brazilian states by means of an analysis of two indicators in three different time periods (before, during and after the reform) and verify to what extent […]

Is there Executive interference in the regulatory agencies after its formal establishment as independent bodies? Under what conditions the Executive chooses to interfere in the agencies? This paper analyses the degree of interference in Brazilian national regulatory agencies and provide a tentative explanation for the variation in the degree of interference. The basic hypotheses is that credibility costs, the degree of formal independence and the preferences of presidents are crucial factors affecting the extent to which presidents interfere in the […]