Journalists and policy analysts have highlighted the emergence of Brazil as a regional power. However, little attention has been paid to its foreign policy strategies. Brazil’s rise to prominence in world politics represents the historical culmination of a foreign policy featuring two main strategies – persuasion and consensus building – both of which emphasise the use of soft power. We analyse four current foreign policy initiatives: the campaign for a permanent seat on the UNSC; the development of a nuclear […]

This article intends to analyze the institutionalization of political science in Brazil through the expansion of the graduate system and evaluation process, which promoted research and scientific evaluations of institutions with Master`s and doctoral degree programs by an assessment model based on peer reviews and the rating of scientific production. The focus here is on Political Science in comparison with its neighboring disciplines, Sociology and Anthropology. We attempt to consider the timing of the process of academic institutionalization of Political […]

This article offers an analysis of the polemic between neo-republicanism and Isaiah Berlin on the concept of liberty. Neo-republican theory argues that Berlin’s concept of liberty allows arbitrary power to emerge, and that the characteristically negative association between intervention and liberty in his argument should be dispelled. This article points out that the concept of liberty in Berlin does not preclude intervention to prevent oppression. One theme present in Berlin’s argument is that interference by Law is an instrument that […]

Even though they possess several power resources, Brazilian Presidents also elaborate their legislative proposals based upon bills already being processed in Congress through a phenomenon called Appropriation of the legislative agenda. In this paper I examine the conditions under which this phenomenon occurs by means of a typology and a qualitative comparative analysis (QCA). I conclude that Appropriation provides the President with the expansion of the formal support base by controlling the agenda of allied and opposition parties as well […]

(von BÜLOW, Marisa. A batalha do livre comércio: a construção de redes transnacionais da sociedade civil nas Américas. São Paulo: Editora UNESP, 2014) For the contemporary reader, especially a young Brazilian academic, it may not be clear that the debate on free trade has assumed different nuances since 1990. If at that time the issue was strictly related with a neoliberal agenda and, therefore, focused solely on market efficiency while being restricted to a few group of economists and market […]

(1) Scholars must always graphically analyze their data before interpreting the p-value In many cases, as pointed out by , graphical analysis cannot help you. That being said, ignoring graphs is a much worse path to trail. Graphical analysis is a powerful tool not only for examining linear relationships but also to identify exponential, quadratic, and cubic relationships. Additionally, graphical analysis can be applied to more descriptive goals not related to the presence of covariates or model selection. We simulated […]