The primary goal of this article is to examine the dynamics of changes in expenditure allocation in Brazil’s federal budget over the past two decades, highlighting periods of incrementalism and punctuation based on the theoretical and methodological assumptions of Punctuated Equilibrium Theory (PET). To achieve this, a database of the approved federal budget from 2000 to 2021 was created, with budget classifications coded into 21 policy domains following the methodology of the Comparative Agendas Project (CAP). Descriptive analyses of the […]

It is well known that during times of social unrest, replacing the constitution is one of the first proposals to emerge, at least in Latin America, as if this constitutional shift could resolve any problem. Constitutional substitution is not a new phenomenon in Latin America; it actually began after the region’s redemocratization. However, it is striking that, despite similar conditions of social unrest, many other countries in the region have not undergone such an encompassing constitutional reform. Our main focus […]

The debate about the operation of Brazilian political institutions is far from conclusive. It could hardly be different, since current Brazilian democratic regime is only 30 years-old. This article updates a previous one, published in 2000, in which I discuss different and rival interpretations on the functioning of the Brazilian democracy. Some new works argue that a ‘dialectic synthesis’ of those strands has been recently produced. This article demonstrates this argument is not accurate. Instead, my main argument is that, […]

The present article discusses the conditions for the adoption of development strategies in Latin America in the aftermath of neoliberal reforms, focusing specifically on the role of political institutions as a component of productive regimes in selected countries. Development is treated as an endogenous process, shaped over time in terms of trajectories that are continuously redefined according to specific political conjunctures. Having moved from restricted democracies or authoritarian regimes and autarchic economies to mass democracies operating in the context of […]