Abstract This research note introduces ENETRIX as an essential platform designed to document, monitor, and evaluate Brazil’s energy diplomacy. The platform provides users with crucial information derived from international energy agreements to which Brazil is a signatory. Developed by the Energy Security Studies Group (Gesene) within the Department of International Relations at the Federal University of Paraíba, ENETRIX serves as a strategic tool for promoting international energy cooperation. This article explores the platform’s potential as a vehicle for data diplomacy, […]

Abstract The legislative success of presidential agendas in Brazil has traditionally been attributed to formal coalitions formed by the Executive. While the centrality of these coalitions is widely recognized, a key question remains: do formal governing coalitions secure sufficient votes to guarantee this success? To explore this question, the study develops a Legislative Performance Index (LPI) that measures the contribution of each party’s votes to the approval of Executive-backed bills. Drawing on data from 2,030 roll-call votes in the Chamber […]

In ‘Property Threats and the Politics of Anti-Statism’, Ondetti (2021) examines the variations in taxation across Latin America, especially regarding total tax burden and state size. Adopting an actor-based approach, the author emphasizes the role of threats to property rights as the leading cause for lower tax burdens. Ondetti (2021) argues that attempts at expropriation triggered backlash reactions, leading to path-dependent anti-state coalitions aimed at preventing further expropriation and higher taxation. The book contrasts the experiences of Chile and Mexico […]

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s aim to turn Brazil into a global environmental leader has faced three different challenges: conceptual, economic, and political-institutional tensions. In this article, we discuss and analyze how the concept of climate justice, the old tension between development and environmental protection, and the relationship with the Congress and social movements have been reconfigured in Lula’s third term in office. We discuss these tensions in light of Brazil’s environmental history and of the perception of important […]

This paper seeks to contribute to the understanding of variations in subnational policies and the factors that explain them. Some studies attribute these differences to the uneven distribution of state infrastructure and capacity at the subnational level, while others emphasize the role of policy legacies, actors, ideology, ideas, and networks to explain subnational policy variations. This study, analyses variations in policy changes in secondary education across Brazilian states and the factors that influenced them through a qualitative and comparative approach […]

This study examines Brazilian female legislators’ perceptions of gendered political violence by analyzing responses from 61 female federal deputies and 12 female senators (representing 81% of female legislators in office during the 56th legislature) to a self-administered questionnaire on the subject. The data indicate that gendered political violence affects a significant majority of these legislators, with 81% of respondents reporting firsthand experiences. For 90% of the interviewees, this violence discourages women from participating in politics, and according to 78%, it […]

This article primarily aims to understand the extent to which women holding key party positions can contribute to improve women candidates’ access to public funding for their campaigns. We have looked into the 2018 election to the Chamber of Deputies (Brazil’s lower house of Congress) and present the following hypotheses: the greater presence of women in their parties’ key decision-making levels leads to better access for women who ran for office, and left-wing parties have more women on their executive […]

The primary goal of this article is to examine the dynamics of changes in expenditure allocation in Brazil’s federal budget over the past two decades, highlighting periods of incrementalism and punctuation based on the theoretical and methodological assumptions of Punctuated Equilibrium Theory (PET). To achieve this, a database of the approved federal budget from 2000 to 2021 was created, with budget classifications coded into 21 policy domains following the methodology of the Comparative Agendas Project (CAP). Descriptive analyses of the […]

This article explores Brazil’s foreign policy related to agribusiness, examining how the Parliamentary Agricultural Front (FPA) leverages its legislative power to influence Brazilian Foreign Policy (BFP) in favour of agribusiness interests. This exploratory study highlights the interests at stake and the formal mechanisms employed by the sector to influence Brazil’s international agenda. The analysis covers the period from 2015 to 2022, encompassing two legislative terms under the presidencies of Rousseff (2015-2016), Temer (2016-2018) and Bolsonaro (2019-2022). Methodologically, the study qualifies […]

In Felipe Freller’s work (2021) titled ‘Quando É Preciso Decidir’ (When Decisions Must Be Made), the focus is on exploring the complexities involved in decision-making in the context of modern democracy: How to make decisions, if, at times, the executive is faced with situations that were not anticipated by the legislative? How to make decisions when popular sentiment does not support the preservation of an egalitarian regime, and citizens lean toward calls for a reaction? And when the act of […]

This article aims to look into the thought of jurist Alberto Pasqualini as part of the early stages of organization of the ideology of ‘trabalhismo’, which appears in the author’s work as a political theology. This doctrine emerged as the foundation of Getúlio Vargas’s Estado Novo and had to adapt to the democratic regime of the 1946 Republic. We argue that Alberto Pasqualini played a fundamental in this endeavor. He acted both as a theorist of ‘trabalhismo’ and as one […]

Brazil faces widespread illegal gold mining, particularly in the Amazon rainforest, with profound environmental, economic, and social implications, as half of the country’s gold output is suspected of having dubious origin. This paper delves into how regulations have shaped Brazil’s gold industry over the years and fostered illegality. It also brings to light recent advancements in this field, such as adopting electronic invoices for the wildcat gold trade and suspending the ‘good faith’ presumption applied to wildcat gold transactions, which […]