This article aims to analyze Brazil’s policy towards South America during Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva’s government by discussing what kind of leadership the country was able to perform in the region during this time. The authors examine the role played by the policy of International Cooperation for Development on such regional leadership. The central argument is that although Brazil has performed the role of a regional leader, there is a need for distinguishing leadership for regional matters – inwards […]

This article deals with the State regulation of drinking water and sanitation services in the Metropolitan Area of Buenos Aires. Its main objective is to identify the continuities and ruptures in State regulation during the transition from private management (1993-2006) to renationalisation and State management (2006 onwards). The concept of “State capacities” (both administrative and relational) is used to assess regulatory performance. For the administrative capacities, the correspondence between the design and resources of the agencies, as well as the […]

The aim of this article is to investigate the institutionalisation of the state Public Defender’s Offices before and after the reform that granted independence and new functions to the Public Defender’s Offices in Brazil. We attempt to understand these processes based on theories of judicial empowerment (ideational and governance perspectives), analyse them in the Brazilian states by means of an analysis of two indicators in three different time periods (before, during and after the reform) and verify to what extent […]

Regulatory agencies possess the particularity of being controlled by non-elected politicians whose power is derived from delegations made by incumbent powers. There exists, however, a concern with the creation of institutional mechanisms that permit public participation, thus guaranteeing greater democratization and social control of the regulatory process. One of these participatory mechanisms is the public hearing, which was not given much attention by Brazilian literature on lobbying and interest groups. This article seeks to contribute to fill this gap, focusing […]

This paper looks at the main finding by Amorim Neto (2011), namely that Brazil’s power explains why it distanced itself from the country that had once been its great ally in the first half of the last century. We propose an alternative explanation grounded on the realist literature in IR. Ultimately, we seek to determine whether the variable has behaved in the same way for other South American countries, searching for independent variables that could help us explain a visible […]

Government decisions are taken based on circumstantiated studies and analyses of the policy in question. These studies, backed up by theory, research and good practices, indicate the alternatives available and their consequences, thus allowing the decision maker to choose with knowledge and confidence the most convenient programme or policy for the objectives proposed. Does this ideal, modern, rational world correspond to the practices of decision-makers? Is this comfortable situation, in which validated options are offered in order to inform decisions […]

The study of infrastructure services has long remained a field of technical studies carried out by the engineering community or by economists and finance experts, with few exceptions. This absence of contributions from other areas has caused the presence and dissemination of what the authors of this book call “mainstream water and sanitation policies” – general and standardised solutions for water and sanitation services (WSS) worldwide –, which have disregarded local processes and differences. This situation has had disastrous consequences […]

Traditionally conceived as a singular, differentiated policy insulated from public debate, foreign policy in democratic political systems has gradually drawn closer to other public policies. Mechanisms for channelling the demands of different political actors and even for direct participation in developing and executing foreign policy, as well as mechanisms of control and accountability, have been established and have moved the democratisation of foreign policy forward to a greater or lesser degree, according to the context. However, an examination of the […]

The debate on effectiveness is today at the centre of the participation agenda. What are the results of participatory institutions, and how and when do they produce change? These are questions asked by activists, academics and governments hungry for assessments for evaluating the outcome of the rich democratic experimentation that has recently taken place in Brazil, and for projecting their future ventures. In academia, this effort means huge theoretical and methodological challenges. After all, when we speak of the results […]

(FIGUEIREDO FILHO, Dalson. B. et al. When is statistical significance not significant? Brazilian Political Science Review. Vol. 07, Nº 01, 2013) An article titled “When is statistical significance not significant?” was published in this journal. The study echoes countless others which have underlined the dangers of wrongly interpreting the p-value (see for an overview of such studies). The authors’ main goal is to provide a basis for understanding the logic behind tests of significance and their appropriate role in empirical […]