This article deals with an issue as yet little explored in the vast literature about political participation: the role of corruption in political engagement. It investigates whether the coexistence, the values and the perception of citizens in relation to corrupt practices and actors have effects on political activism, and it verifies the direction in which this is evolving, whether it is in the direction of engagement in or withdrawal from politics. The unit of analysis is the individual, the geographic […]

This study explores the effects of electoral rules on political polarization in the legislative branch of government. Since in Brazil the districts are also the states, and senators are chosen according to the plurality-majority rule while representatives are determined by a proportional rule, the comparison between legislative chambers enables one to test whether the plurality-majority rule induces politicians to behave less moderately, and whether the proportional rule has the opposite effect. To estimate these effects, roll call data from 1988 […]

Using a factor decomposition of the Gini coefficient, we measure the contribution to inequality of direct monetary income flows to and from the Brazilian State. The income flows from the State include public sector workers’ earnings, Social Security pensions, unemployment benefits, and Social Assistance transfers. The income flows to the State comprise direct taxes and employees’ social security contributions. Data come from the Brazilian POF 2008–09. We do not measure indirect contributions to inequality of subsidies granted to and taxation […]

This article assesses the effectiveness of the 2010 Nagoya Protocol to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) for addressing “biopiracy” of genetic resources; that is, their biotechnological utilization in violation of either the provider country legislation or mutually agreed contractual obligations. Biopiracy is defined as a problem resulting from a distributive conflict between provider and user countries, the practical difficulties of monitoring the utilization of genetic resources in a transnational context, and the pervasive scientific uncertainty about the nature and […]

Following the republican revival of the last few decades, the ideal of freedom as non-domination has become an important point of convergence among republican theorists, especially among those associated with neo-Roman republicanism. Furthermore, all neo-Roman theorists argue that a legitimate republican polity in contemporary societies must take a democratic form to overcome the aristocratic and elitist features pervasive in classical and modern republicanism. This study argues that the emerging concept of republican democracy remains essentially contested despite the increasing agreement […]

This study addresses, from a theoretically oriented perspective, the relationship between freedom of expression and democracy, trying to assess its implications for the regulation of mass media. Starting with a legal case in which a TV channel and a journalist were prosecuted for hate speech, looking at the reaction of the São Paulo Press Association to the case, I examine three perspectives on the statute and the reach of expressive liberties—the Millian Principle, the collectivist approach, and the participatory view—which […]

This paper focuses on the evolution of the institutional presidency – meaning the cluster of agencies that directly support the chief of the executive – in Argentina and Brazil since their redemocratization in the 1980s. It investigates what explains the changes that have come about regarding the size of the institutional presidency and the types of agency that form it. Following the specialized literature, we argue that the growth of the institutional presidency is connected to developments occurring in the […]

This article intends to analyze the institutionalization of political science in Brazil through the expansion of the graduate system and evaluation process, which promoted research and scientific evaluations of institutions with Master`s and doctoral degree programs by an assessment model based on peer reviews and the rating of scientific production. The focus here is on Political Science in comparison with its neighboring disciplines, Sociology and Anthropology. We attempt to consider the timing of the process of academic institutionalization of Political […]

Even though they possess several power resources, Brazilian Presidents also elaborate their legislative proposals based upon bills already being processed in Congress through a phenomenon called Appropriation of the legislative agenda. In this paper I examine the conditions under which this phenomenon occurs by means of a typology and a qualitative comparative analysis (QCA). I conclude that Appropriation provides the President with the expansion of the formal support base by controlling the agenda of allied and opposition parties as well […]

Journalists and policy analysts have highlighted the emergence of Brazil as a regional power. However, little attention has been paid to its foreign policy strategies. Brazil’s rise to prominence in world politics represents the historical culmination of a foreign policy featuring two main strategies – persuasion and consensus building – both of which emphasise the use of soft power. We analyse four current foreign policy initiatives: the campaign for a permanent seat on the UNSC; the development of a nuclear […]

This article offers an analysis of the polemic between neo-republicanism and Isaiah Berlin on the concept of liberty. Neo-republican theory argues that Berlin’s concept of liberty allows arbitrary power to emerge, and that the characteristically negative association between intervention and liberty in his argument should be dispelled. This article points out that the concept of liberty in Berlin does not preclude intervention to prevent oppression. One theme present in Berlin’s argument is that interference by Law is an instrument that […]

This paper looks at the main finding by Amorim Neto (2011), namely that Brazil’s power explains why it distanced itself from the country that had once been its great ally in the first half of the last century. We propose an alternative explanation grounded on the realist literature in IR. Ultimately, we seek to determine whether the variable has behaved in the same way for other South American countries, searching for independent variables that could help us explain a visible […]