John Stuart Mill and José de Alencar lived at the same time and wrote about the same issues, and yet the connections between their political theories remain unexplored. Seeking to offer a comparison of both theories, this article argues that reading Mill’s “Considerations on Representative Government” (1977b) vis-à-vis Alencar’s “Systema representativo” (1868) brings to the fore two aspects of Mill’s political theory that Mill scholars usually overlook: 01. political representation is endowed with constructivist power; 02. epistemic democracy and agonistic […]

This essay suggests a theory of strategic legislative agenda control. It argues that a single party can effectively set the agenda under majoritarian gatekeeping rules without obtaining majority or even plurality status. The agenda-setting party need not be the median party in the assembly nor supported by executive-led parliamentary coalitions. The Mexican Chamber of Deputies provides a case study of how majoritarian gatekeeping and political context establish the conditions necessary for one-party-led agenda-setting in a fragmented congress with or without […]

The Editor-in-Chief of the Brazilian Political Science Review manifests that the funding information of the article entitled Multi-level governance in federal contexts: the Social Assistance Policy in the City of São Paulo, authored by Renata Bichir, Gabriela Horesh Brettas and Pamella Canato, was omitted from the original publication. The first footnote of the article must read: * […]

In June 2012, the Paraguayan Parliament executed a procedure that removed President Fernando Lugo from office. Since 1993, only two presidents have completed their mandates, Juan Carlos Wasmosy (1993-1998) and Nicanor Duarte Frutos (2003-2008). With the exception of the latter, all elected presidents have faced either successful or attempted coups, mostly organized by the military. In the case of Lugo, South American governments reacted by suspending Paraguay from two regional organizations (Unasur and Mercosur). This article has two main objectives: […]

The creation of the Union of South American Nations (USAN) aroused expectations about joint development and production of military aircraft in South America. However, political divergences, technological asymmetries and budgetary problems made projects canceled. Faced with the impasse, this article approaches features of two military aircraft development experiences and their links with the regionalization processes to extract elements that help to account for the problems faced by USAN. The processes of adoption of the F-104 and the Tornado in the […]

This article deals with the relations between public policy instruments and production practices of objects related to government action. It demonstrates that the materiality of the instruments built to make a public policy object legible to its operators has independent effects on the relations among private operators, bureaucrats, and the public sector. Based on the bus service provision policies in the city of São Paulo between the 1980s and the 2000s, it shows that transportation policies are structured around the […]

The article compares al-Qaeda and ISIS, which despite similar origins have developed distinct paths and goals. According to our analytical framework, this is because al-Qaeda appears to use terror as a tool to induce other audiences into particular behaviors, expecting to change the correlation of forces in its favor in the future, while ISIS is a more complex organization whose primary goal is to build a new political order in territories it occupies. The results highlight the problems of treating […]

Studies on democratic attitudes in Latin America indicate that older citizens are more likely to express a preference for democracy. This contradicts part of the literature, which suggests that the greatest support should come from younger generations, who were socialized under democratic regimes. One possible explanation for the greater support for democracy among the older generation is that they experienced the repression of political and civil rights under authoritarian rule, thus creating an aversion to such regimes. In this article, […]

The contemporary world order is under intense scrutiny from observers, specialists, and researchers of the subject. Since the 2000s, a period that witnessed the emergence of developing countries onto the international scene, we have been seeing a growing interest in the study of the relations between the traditional powers and rising powers, as well as their effects on the global system. Such an interest can be illustrated by the recent publishing of impactful work such as , , , and […]

One of the main challenges for theories of international relations and trade policy is the ‘security dilemma’. International security and national defense are central issues in the area of international relations; they have always been variables related to the anarchic nature of the international system, associated with the prevalence of distrust in the relationship among states. For this reason, the classic academic debate between the neorealists’ and the neo-institutionalists’ contrasting views has basically revolved around the quest to overcome instability, […]

In this study, we seek to contribute to discussions on how the quality of academic production in the field of political science should be evaluated using Brazil as a case study. We contrast the ‘expert-driven approach’ that is followed by CAPES, an agency of the Brazilian federal government with the ‘citational’ approach, which is based on the ranking of journals by mainstream indices of scientific research impact. With data provided by CAPES from 2010 to 2014, we examine to what […]

Edited by Oliver Stuenkel and Matthew M. Taylor, ‘Brazil on the Global Stage’ brings together the reflections of researchers from Brazilian and American institutions about Brazil’s engagement with the current liberal order. In the book, the liberal global order is defined by “open markets, international institutions, cooperative security, democratic community, collective problem solving, shared sovereignty over some issues, and the rule of law” (STUENKEL and TAYLOR, 2015, p. 06), all of which follows the common understanding of liberal internationalists such […]