This article evaluates the effects of two educational policies implemented in the Brazilian state of Ceará. The first was a tax incentive (TI) for mayors to improve municipal education. Under this policy, municipal tax transfers were conditioned on educational achievement. The second was a program to offer educational technical assistance (TA) to municipalities. The impact of these policies was estimated by employing the synthetic control method to create a synthetic Ceará not affected by TI and TA. When the two […]

Evangelical black activism exists in Brazil since the 1970s. Its current public reemergence, however, is still under-explored in the social sciences. Moreover, part of the specialized literature has recently characterized this activism as incomplete – since its actors are considered to be ‘rejecting African inheritances’ – and advocates that black and evangelical identities are incompatible. Differing from this perspective, this article shows how evangelicals participate in the public problematization of racism; it proposes to address this issue with a non-essentialist […]

This paper focuses on the timing of coalition formation under presidential systems. While elections in parliamentary regimes have recently been characterized by a high degree of uncertainty both in the results and the formation of cabinets, this is not the case for presidential politics. As a result, we argue that coalition cycles differ across systems of government. As a matter of fact, we argue that the process of coalition formation under presidentialism is more complicated. To test our claim, we […]

In this article, I consider the approach of racial relations versus the perspective of racial politics. The former, formulated within the framework of the Chicago School of Sociology in the 1920s, assumes that races interact with each other according to the “cycle of racial relations”. This interpretation highlights the cultural and psychological dimensions and neglects the ideological, political, and institutional factors constraining and driving individual and collective choices. The racial politics approach suggests that social interactions are mediated by attributes […]

Do previous trajectories of Federal Supreme Court justices influence their votes in court? Despite recent advances in research on judicial behavior, questions remain about the factors influencing the decisions of STF justices. Building a new typology of these justices’ career paths, this article tests the hypothesis that professional characteristics influenced the judicial behavior of the justices judging the Ação Penal 470, a criminal case known as Mensalão . Our theory suggests that STF nominees bring to the court law interpretations […]

This article presents a meta-analysis of the history and the literature on the current state of political science in Mexico with the aim of obtaining an overall picture of the characteristics and profiles of political scientists and political science. It notes that there has been a process of change in the profiles of authors and the foci of texts, with a tendency to formalize analysis and a growing influence of the American tradition, along with a process of professional academic […]

How can activist bureaucrats unexpectedly influence policy outcomes? What strategies do these actors adopt in order to defend and implement public policies in institutional settings unfavorable to their ideas? How do the individual trajectories of activist bureaucrats influence their strategies and repertoires of action? Drawing from the literature on institutional activism, this article shows how bureaucrats worked as activists to create and institutionalize participatory arenas in slum upgrading projects, within an institutional setting adverse to popular participation. Our research was […]

Several recent studies have investigated if support for Jair Bolsonaro in the presidential election of 2018 is positively associated with COVID-19 infections and deaths in Brazil. In these studies, COVID-19 outcomes in 2020 and 2021 are the dependent variables, and votes for Jair Bolsonaro in the 2018 presidential election (as a proxy for ideology) are the key explanatory variable. This article discusses why ecological research designs are difficult to test empirically. We discuss why correlations between vote shares and COVID-19 […]

A growing body of literature addresses Brazil’s National Policy of Social Assistance, but little is known about the factors that affect the creation of nonprofit, private social assistance providers (PSAPs) in the country. This paper analyzes the historical patterns of PSAP creation in Brazil. We argue that the place of PSAPs within the social protection system changed during the 2000s and that this change stems from a reassessment of the state’s role in this area. We also contend that a […]

This article explores the connection between the proportional electoral system (PR) and party organizations as a key institutional determinant of party-group linkages from cross-party and national perspectives. Developing a nuanced framework, we propose an integrated model to address two questions: 01. Do candidate-centred electoral systems affect the development of party-group linkages? 02. In the case that electoral systems do have an impact, is it a direct impact or is it mediated by party organizations? Using V-Party (2020) and V-Dem (2020) […]

This study investigates digital activism and democratic culture among citizens of São Paulo, Brazil. It aims to understand: 01. whether digital participation is becoming a surrogate instance of other forms of participation; and 02. whether digital activists share a specific political culture regarding democratic attitudes and behaviors. Drawing on a representative sample of 2,417 interviews, we apply multivariate analysis techniques to characterize digital activists in terms of political participation and democratic culture. Our findings show that digital participation complements – […]

This paper aims at understanding the governance of public budgeting in large metropolises with the use of comparative analysis. The analysis is focused on budgetary governance in London and São Paulo and uses qualitative and quantitative data from 2008 to 2019 to understand whether analytical categories such as incrementalism of expenditures, complexity of budgetary rules, bureaucratic hierarchy, bargaining, and muddling through are useful to compare two metropolises, especially to determine the discretionary power of mayors in making budget allocation decisions. […]