The “humanistic” or “solidarity-based” trend in the Brazilian strategy of international insertion, adopted after the rise to power of President Lula and considered innovative, consolidated the objective of prioritizing the South-South axis and can be explained by domestic, regional, and systemic reasons. This strategy was put into practice by increasing the international aid granted by Brazil, by transferring resources and technology and by the emphasis placed on conveying to partner countries some of the domestic social policies and programmes developed […]

This article aims to discuss how technological production has been affected by new organizational patterns of funding and evaluation, international transformations in terms of the reorganization of research centers, and changes in innovation practices. Researchers and scientists have had their activities redefined through new organizational formats that today are well-established. The purpose here is to verify the impacts that these tendencies have had on the scientific and technological production of Public Research Institutes. We analyzed the case of the Technological […]

The reliance on courts for addressing public policy questions and political controversies is a central phenomenon in contemporary democracies. The judicialization of politics is the result of a shift in core issues regarding democratic legitimacy, both in the sphere of institution building as well as political culture. Social justice arose as a central variable in the legitimacy of democracies, becoming vital in establishing support towards democratic political systems. This article explores the relation between perceptions on justice, judicialization of politics […]

This article explains how judicial review influences intergovernmental political dynamics in Brazil, Colombia and Spain. The argument is developed in light of two questions: how supreme courts have established themselves as pivotal institutions for settling vertical intergovernmental disputes, and how national and subnational politicians use judicial review in order to enhance their own interests. A comparison between the judicial review processes in federal Brazil, quasi-federal Spain, and unitary Colombia provides an answer to these questions. Accounting for the differences in […]

This article focuses on the appropriation of the subject of Internet and Politics by Brazilian Social Sciences. To this end, we analysed 299 papers presented at 11 conferences in the areas of Sociology, Political Science and Social Communication from 2000 to 2011 in Brazil. The methodology was based on content analysis in order to map the main authors, research centres, political and technological objects, theoretical approaches, methods, techniques and coverage areas of the papers presented in each of these conferences. […]

In spite of the recent progress in the discussion on vote regional concentration brought by , there is still a lack of determination of the districts’ internal areas where candidates obtained their votes. Synthetic concentration indices, as the G index, do not allow for evaluation in disaggregated levels, as municipalities, which would be relevant for the verification of the areas of a candidate’s political influence. This paper aims at bridging this gap through the joint utilization of two other indicators, […]

The Welfare State in the Age of Reason is nor a neutral or modest book. It openly defends a position and suggests specific paths for social policies in Brazil based on successful international experiences that have produced more equality. In its first sentence, the author claims that the book is a defense of the welfare state – in clear opposition to a widespread idea highlighting its crisis – which shows resilience and solid institutionalization. Furthermore, an expansion is observed in […]

The book Opportunities and Deprivation in the Urban South by Eduardo Cesar Leão Marques explores and analyzes a dimension which is traditionally considered secondary (and frequently ignored) in poverty studies: the relationship between sociability configurations and the (re)production of diverse conditions of poverty. Based on a robust and rigorous empirical research with 209 individuals living in poverty situations and 30 middle-class individuals from the Metropolitan Region of São Paulo, the book is organized into seven chapters structured in the following […]

Nothing can be taken for granted, says a popular dictum phrased in different languages and manners. Such obvious statement, however, seems to have been forgotten by both professionals and researchers of politics. Whereas professionals have been surprised by social upheavals in societies where recent material progress seemed to have had successfully accommodated contentious political grievances—as in Brazil and Turkey—, researchers are have been caught by a wave that prioritizes hypothesis-testing over concept- and theory-building. Yet if nobody can avoid the […]

Brazilian foreign policy has reached a very interesting inflection point. The bureaucratic walls of the Itamaraty Palace so stoutly erected by the Baron of Rio Branco in 1902 are cracking. Where foreign policy used to be neatly circumscribed by the world of ‘high politics’ and external interaction by Brazilians limited to a small group of clearly defined actors, the situation today is very different. Itamaraty retains pride of place for the grand geopolitical thinking that often preoccupies the study of […]

The increasing cross-border use of drones, the transnational and elusive phenomenon of cyber espionage and warfare and the ineffectiveness of conventional states’ responses to non-traditional security threats such as international terrorism high-light some of the complexities involved in understanding state power in the 21st century. In the straightforward realist narrative, states are the main players in world politics and power is a reflection of states’ material capabilities. Military capacity, in particular, is the ultimate source of states’ power. Yet, notwithstanding […]