This article seeks to understand the demands of the security sector in Latin America, in the context of reforms promoted by international aid agencies in the region. The hypothesis of this study is that international aid programs focused on Security Sector Reform (SSR) in Latin America have been generic, and have overlooked recipient countries’ own reform agendas. Latin American perspectives on SSR have been inferred from Organization of American States (OAS) documents. Information on international assistance for SSR programs was […]

This essay suggests a theory of strategic legislative agenda control. It argues that a single party can effectively set the agenda under majoritarian gatekeeping rules without obtaining majority or even plurality status. The agenda-setting party need not be the median party in the assembly nor supported by executive-led parliamentary coalitions. The Mexican Chamber of Deputies provides a case study of how majoritarian gatekeeping and political context establish the conditions necessary for one-party-led agenda-setting in a fragmented congress with or without […]

John Stuart Mill and José de Alencar lived at the same time and wrote about the same issues, and yet the connections between their political theories remain unexplored. Seeking to offer a comparison of both theories, this article argues that reading Mill’s “Considerations on Representative Government” (1977b) vis-à-vis Alencar’s “Systema representativo” (1868) brings to the fore two aspects of Mill’s political theory that Mill scholars usually overlook: 01. political representation is endowed with constructivist power; 02. epistemic democracy and agonistic […]

Studies on democratic attitudes in Latin America indicate that older citizens are more likely to express a preference for democracy. This contradicts part of the literature, which suggests that the greatest support should come from younger generations, who were socialized under democratic regimes. One possible explanation for the greater support for democracy among the older generation is that they experienced the repression of political and civil rights under authoritarian rule, thus creating an aversion to such regimes. In this article, […]

This article deals with the relations between public policy instruments and production practices of objects related to government action. It demonstrates that the materiality of the instruments built to make a public policy object legible to its operators has independent effects on the relations among private operators, bureaucrats, and the public sector. Based on the bus service provision policies in the city of São Paulo between the 1980s and the 2000s, it shows that transportation policies are structured around the […]

In June 2012, the Paraguayan Parliament executed a procedure that removed President Fernando Lugo from office. Since 1993, only two presidents have completed their mandates, Juan Carlos Wasmosy (1993-1998) and Nicanor Duarte Frutos (2003-2008). With the exception of the latter, all elected presidents have faced either successful or attempted coups, mostly organized by the military. In the case of Lugo, South American governments reacted by suspending Paraguay from two regional organizations (Unasur and Mercosur). This article has two main objectives: […]

The creation of the Union of South American Nations (USAN) aroused expectations about joint development and production of military aircraft in South America. However, political divergences, technological asymmetries and budgetary problems made projects canceled. Faced with the impasse, this article approaches features of two military aircraft development experiences and their links with the regionalization processes to extract elements that help to account for the problems faced by USAN. The processes of adoption of the F-104 and the Tornado in the […]

The article compares al-Qaeda and ISIS, which despite similar origins have developed distinct paths and goals. According to our analytical framework, this is because al-Qaeda appears to use terror as a tool to induce other audiences into particular behaviors, expecting to change the correlation of forces in its favor in the future, while ISIS is a more complex organization whose primary goal is to build a new political order in territories it occupies. The results highlight the problems of treating […]

In this study, we seek to contribute to discussions on how the quality of academic production in the field of political science should be evaluated using Brazil as a case study. We contrast the ‘expert-driven approach’ that is followed by CAPES, an agency of the Brazilian federal government with the ‘citational’ approach, which is based on the ranking of journals by mainstream indices of scientific research impact. With data provided by CAPES from 2010 to 2014, we examine to what […]

Although integration has been a part of South American discourse for decades, the level at which it is actually promoted remains far from that which is observed in dynamic production and trading centers. Given transformations in global trade, the phenomenon of global value chains is, in fact, very regionalized. We ask whether the trading pattern of Mercosur countries is aligned with approaches based on regional value chain, and if not, how it differs and why. In our evidence and analysis, […]

At the beginning of the 21st century, a series of structural and domestic factors created an environment favourable to the projection of Brazil in the international financial agenda. The period was marked by intense intellectual productivity and reflections about the country’s role in the world, leading to the quest for an independent and dynamic foreign policy. Brazil, along with other Southern countries, submitted proposals to the main multilateral forums operating in the financial sector (such as the International Monetary Fund, […]

The use of social media has become increasingly widespread among citizens and politicians in Brazil. This means of communication served as a key arena for debate and propaganda during the 2014 legislative and presidential elections, when a very polarized political scenario emerged. New approaches have been developed that use information from the social network structure constructed by political actors on social media platforms, such as Twitter, in order to calculate ideal points. Can data from the decision to ‘follow’ a […]