Abstract This essay critically analyses how historical institutionalists and rational choice scholars study institutional stability and change. Special attention is paid to the thorny issue of how political actors’ preferences are formed, with historical institutionalists considering preferences as endogenously formed, and rational choice analysts postulating that preferences are fixed and exogenous. An argument is made in favour of the perspective that considers preferences as being formed within the functioning of the political system over time, endogenously. The essay also proposes […]

Abstract This paper discusses the relationship between technological development and the weapons industry in Brazil, stressing the dependence of the latter on the former. It shows how changes in the arms trade have meant that the production of small arms for export is currently prioritized. The conclusion is that maintaining projects of this nature is only feasible by taking advantage of the remaining industrial base for dual-use production, i.e., to meet both civilian and military demand. Lastly, the possibility that […]

Abstract The article presents a comparison between some aspects of the socio-political theories of Auguste Comte and John Rawls. Its aim is to highlight certain elements that approximate and distance the two authors from one another in terms of political objectives and theoretical-methodological procedures, particularly on the basis of the Comtean perspective. The result is surprising: applying the mutatis mutandis methodological clause, i.e., considering the different socio-political contexts, there are more elements that approximate Rawls to Comte than elements that […]

This paper discusses the issue of political representation, by arguing the necessity of re-envisioning it so as to consider non-electoral forms of representation. It claims that civil society associations can be conceived of as representatives of a series of discourses, voices, opinions, perspectives and ideas. Whilst this type of representation lacks formal mechanisms of authorization and accountability, its legitimacy may emerge from the effects of such associations and from their porosity to several interactional loci. The paper suggests that associations […]

The article aims to contribute to the debate on Legislative participation in Brazil’s foreign policy. The research is based on presidential messages referent to international agreements forwarded to Congress for deliberation between 6 October, 1988 and 31 December, 2006. We find that the Brazilian institutional model does not totally restrict the decision-making process concerning international acts to the Presidency of the Republic and to the Ministry of External Relations. We submit that by analysing presidential messages referent to international agreements […]

The aim of this paper is to analyse the relationship between institutional economics of cooperation and the political economy of trust. Transactions costs, principal-agent theory, market power, increasing-returns theory and value creation, strategic management: competitive forces, resource-based theory, organisational knowledge and learning, strategic choice theory and collective efficiency theory are reviewed. Lastly, the political economy of trust is sustained.

The article aims, in the first instance, to make a detailed analysis of the work of Hedley Bull, approaching the main themes and concepts developed by him. Secondly, it aims to re-evaluate the potential of the author’s contribution, given the new conditions of the post-Cold War period. With this in mind, the article critically analyses the most recent interpretations of his work, which seek to highlight its critical and normative potential, as well as to dissociate it from the realist […]

This article presents results of ongoing research into personal networks in São Paulo, exploring their relationships with poverty and urban segregation. We present the results of networks of 89 poor individuals who live in three different segregation situations in the city. The article starts by describing and analysing the main characteristics of personal networks of sociability, highlighting aspects such as their size, cohesion and diversity, among others. Further, we investigate the main determinants of these networks, especially their relationship with […]

Brazilian politics has been usually analyzed as a case full of pathologies by scholars and political journalists alike. Fragmentation, volatility, clientelism and inefficiency have become bywords for describing the performance of Brazil’s political institutions. As a counter to this view, this work argues that the country’s democracy in the post-1988 period presents enough evidence in favor of classical hypotheses about electoral politics in the contemporary world, theories that invariably are based on premises of rationality in the behavior of voters […]

In analyses of female representation in lower houses, the adoption of quotas, the electoral system and the religious aspect have been identified as the main explanatory variables. In the case of upper houses, I see a relationship between their political strength and women’s presence in them: when they are weak, the presence of female representatives tends to be larger; when they are strong, women’s presence is smaller. Furthermore, the article shows that an analysis based solely on the number of […]

This paper examines the policy positions of Chilean senators. The empirical analysis focuses on two different legislative activities: voting and coauthoring bills. The roll call analysis evaluates the degree to which coalitions act as cohesive policy teams on the floor of Congress, whether parties’ positions match conventional ideological rankings, and the dimensionality of voting decisions. The coauthorship analysis provides alternative ideal points to examine similar questions. The findings of the voting analysis reveal a rather unidimensional world with two distinct […]

This study analyses interactions between Law, professionalism and politics. The primary intent is to understand the judicial behaviour of Brazil’s Supreme Court in the development and consolidation of democracy, by analysing how its justices voted in decisions regarding the constitutionality of laws (judicial review) in the 1988-2003 period and investigating factors that influenced the Court’s decisions. These decisions are analysed both quantitatively and qualitatively in search of: a) voting differences corresponding to the career of each member of the Court; […]