Electronic voting machines were used for the first time in general elections in Brazil in 1998; in that year, some cities used this new voting method, while others continued to vote using paper ballots. Few studies have demonstrated that the rate of invalid votes for federal deputy was significantly lower in cities that used electronic voting machines. This article analyzes the frequency of null votes and blank votes for four posts—federal deputy, state deputy, the president and governor. Based on […]

Against the background of the generalized reduction of poverty in the world, and particularly in Brazil, this article intends to gauge the socio-economic profile of Brazilian households that emerged from poverty and have been identified as integrating a “new middle class”. Using indicators of standards of living from the 2008-2009 Survey on Family Budgets (POF/IBGE), we found out that, in contrast to what has been assumed on the basis of average income criteria, this social stratum is markedly heterogeneous, most […]

Electoral reforms are often portrayed as strategic decisions by rational actors. However, expectations about the electoral consequences of reforms are not always realized ex post. I argue that these strategic mistakes occur because of information failures. Even though electoral reforms are decided at a national level, electoral information is geographically concentrated at a local level, where elections take place. At the time of reforms, members of the National Congress need to gather local level information. When deciding whether to support […]

The article explores how the literature on ‘failed states’ (re)produces the modern state as a regulatory ideal, obscuring its contingent character and its violent foundation. So, discursive practices, based on an Eurocentric account, construct the ‘failed state’ as deviant. The resultant hierarchy of states, in turn, creates favorable conditions for interventionist practices, whose agents are depicted as members of a ‘progressive’ and ‘benevolent’ ‘international community’. As state failure is interpreted as exclusively domestic process, a well-demarcated boundary between the domestic […]

The empirical turn in deliberative democracy has fostered the development of different methodological procedures. Within this literature, studies focusing on the internet have gained increasing attention. The belief that the internet may help solve some of the deliberative deficits of democracies has propelled an interest in the potential benefits and problems of online discourse. This article seeks to discuss some of the methods that have been advocated for the study of online deliberation to point out three of their weaknesses: […]

The article analyzes the career patterns of Brazilian senators during the First Republic. It explores whether there is any relationship between the establishment of a structure of political opportunities and the recruitment patterns of this segment of the parliamentary elite. The aim is to assess the circulation among the political positions attained before reaching the position of Senator. The research consists of the systematic observation of the biographies of the 851 holders of senatorial mandates from the 21st legislature (1890/1891) […]

This essay reviews the main analyses produced for publication in 2014 alluding to the 50th anniversary of the 1964 coup and the dictatorship that followed (1964-85). It is noteworthy that most of these analyses, authored by historians and journalists, relativize several Manichaean concepts and versions; chiefly, they enhance society’s responsibility for this authoritarian experiment. The coup, they claim, was not an atypical event in the country’s political history; it simply expanded conservative and authoritarian values. In daring fashion, they point […]

The interest regarding the effects a strong Judiciary may have on political systems has a long history. Tocqueville in his seminal work Democracy in America had already warned us of such phenomenon centuries ago. Very recently, political science as a discipline has dealt with the global phenomenon of the expansion of Judiciary Power. This process presents itself through various levels of social relations up until the political level. In the specific field of politics, we may see the growing inclusion […]

(Mainwaring, Scott and Pérez-Liñan, Aníbal. Democracies and Dictatorships in Latin America: Emergence, Survival and Fall. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013) Scott Mainwaring and Aníbal Pérez-Liñan’s book, Democracies and dictatorships in Latin America: Emergence, Survival, and Fall, is a hefty work. In the book, the authors analyzed 65 years of political regime changes in the subcontinent, from 1945 to 2010, with some digressions on the preceding period, since the early twentieth century. […]

(Angrist, Joshua D. and Pischke, Jörn-Steffen. Mastering ‘Metrics: The Path From Cause to Effect. Princeton University Press, 2014) The field of causal inference has seen a remarkable development in the last few years. While social scientists have always devoted considerable effort to understand causal effects, their quest for the perfect identification strategy received a new impulse after the publication of Donald Rubin’s causal model in the late 1970s (; . Although the “potential outcomes revolution” is still in its infancy, […]

(Heine,Jorge and Weiffen,Brigitte. 21st Century Democracy Promotion in the Americas: standing up for the Polity. Routledge, 2014) Since the creation and successful development of the European regional integration, a debate has existed on how regional institutions can contribute to the promotion and defense of democracy. Thus, a link between regionalism and democracy has been established. The extent to which regionalism and democracy are related and how regional institutions promote and defend democracy have been issues also discussed in the Americas. […]