Few of the facts in ‘Decadent Developmentalism’ will be unfamiliar to even casual followers of Brazil’s political economy: the segmented labour markets that limit workers’ access to social protection; the ability of incumbent firms like JBS to extract resources from the government; or the role of the bureaucracy in taming the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Reliance on a consolidated block of evidence makes it all the more impressive that this book so dramatically reorients the reader’s understanding of Brazil’s development trajectory since […]

The three principles of the Unified Health System (Sistema Único de Saúde – SUS) – universality, integrality, and equity – underlie most analyses of the Brazilian public health system. How these three elements combine to guarantee the right to health is a question that allows different interpretations. One possibility is through the lens of judicialization, a theme treated very competently by Octávio Ferraz (2021), based on consistent data and a meticulous theoretical discussion. The universal public system signified an enormous […]

In the middle of the first decade of the twenty-first century, the left reached power in various regions of Latin America, remaining there for around 15 years – a period known as the ‘pink tide’. There was an expectation that the leftwing governments would stimulate social inclusion and the expansion of citizenship rights. However, the scenario began to change with the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff in Brazil in 2016 and the election of presidents more aligned with the ideas of […]

The book on which this review is based is one of the most recent in the study of the development of 21st century populism. In it, the authors advance a general theory that explains how a revolution in values has been the trigger for support for populist-authoritarian forces in Europe and the United States, something that had not previously been done for such a wide range of countries. To do this they establish the fundamentals for understanding how and why […]

The Participatory Institutions (IPs) are expected to reduce the inequalities by including new players and demands from marginalized groups into the decision processes. Yet, what are the paths that lead the IPs to become strong enough to fulfill that role? That is the central question that Lindsay Mayka (2019) seeks to answer in her book based on a comparative study of the health and social assistance councils of Brazil and the planning and health councils of Colombia, which the Federal […]

‘Compare or Perish’, said the political scientist De Beus at a social science conference in 1992 reflecting on the poor state of comparison in political science at that time. The importance of comparison in areas such as political science and public administration has been advocated by many authors as the “very essence of the scientific method” (, p. 878; ; ; ; ; ). Almost three decades after De Beus’ statement, we can say that the field of comparison in […]

A review is an interpretation and, at the same time, an invitation to read. Paulo Ravecca’s book is challenging, dynamic, and thought-provoking, sparking questions and reflections within many areas of research and politics. This makes it a book with unlimited potential to stimulate and nourish research in a diverse array of matters beyond those specifically approached by it. It engages the reader – front and centre – with a stark political message: anyone can be oppressive, and oppression can happen […]

The 1960 publication of ‘The American Voter’, which revealed that voters have stable affective ties to political parties, transformed political alignment into one of the central objects of contemporary political analysis. It was in , however, that the social bases of such links were investigated and found to be formed by means of the concept of ‘cleavages’. Stability, then, comes from the links that party systems maintain with social structures in such a way that different models of society produce […]

The first part of the ‘Routledge Handbook of Brazilian Politics’, entitled ‘The Input Side’, is dedicated, as the title suggests, to a societal approach rather than an institutional one with an emphasis on political phenomena and processes. There is a markedly socio-political bent to the book’s treatment of the themes of its eight chapters: corruption; political participation; gender and race relations; religion and politics; social movements; innovative democratic decision-making processes; representation of interests. The makeup of book’s chapters does not […]

Is it still possible to think about innovations within the context of our battered democracies? ‘The Two Faces of Institutional Innovation: Promises and Limits of Democratic Participation in Latin America’ is a book that pursues this issue and reflects the maturity of this field of study on the topic of institutional participation and democratic innovations. Following an initial period of enthusiasm for these means of ‘deepening democracy’, the context of this work is one mistrust in traditional political institutions around […]

In the aftermath of the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 04, 1989, which epitomized the end of the Cold War, many countries experienced new forms of democratization with the involvement of non-State actors in politics. It had taken two decades for the democratic transition to spread around the world. Blossoming civil society organizations would need another decade to “democratize democracy” () in these countries. In the meantime, almost every country from Latin America and the Caribbean, Eastern Europe […]

Written by one of Brazil’s leading proponents of Ernesto Laclau’s theory of discourse, ‘1961-1964: The Brazilian Dictatorship in Two Coups’ presents an innovative conception of the events that led up to a dictatorship that lasted 21 years. A Laclauean perspective permeates the entire work. One can appreciate the discourse of the main actors involved – political groups, unions, social and military movements – through solid documentary analysis in which special attention is paid to antagonistic debates that reveal the construction […]