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 […]

Does the regional environment shape a state’s international socialization and, thus, its perception on external affairs? If this is the case, how does such a process happen and what are the consequences for a state’s global foreign policy? We tackle both questions by elaborating an analytical framework that accounts for spatial-temporal interactions in foreign policy. We accomplish such a task by reporting the preliminary findings of a comparison of Brazil’s and India’s views on the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Through the […]

The Editor-in-Chief of the Brazilian Political Science Review manifests that the institutional affiliation of Sergio Firpo and Renan Pieri, authors of the article entitled Future electoral impacts of having a female mayor, DOI: 10.1590/1981-3821201700020001, published in the Brazilian Political Science Review Vol.11(2), on pages 01-28, is incorrect. Sergio Firpo and Renan Pieri are affiliated to Insper Instituto de Ensino e Pesquisa. The name and the institutional affiliation of the authors follow: […]

At the beginning of the 21st century, a series of structural and domestic factors created an environment favourable to the projection of Brazil in the international financial agenda. The period was marked by intense intellectual productivity and reflections about the country’s role in the world, leading to the quest for an independent and dynamic foreign policy. Brazil, along with other Southern countries, submitted proposals to the main multilateral forums operating in the financial sector (such as the International Monetary Fund, […]

Although integration has been a part of South American discourse for decades, the level at which it is actually promoted remains far from that which is observed in dynamic production and trading centers. Given transformations in global trade, the phenomenon of global value chains is, in fact, very regionalized. We ask whether the trading pattern of Mercosur countries is aligned with approaches based on regional value chain, and if not, how it differs and why. In our evidence and analysis, […]

In the midst of one of the worst political crises in Brazilian history, UFRJ Professor Jairo Nicolau’s book, “Representantes de quem?: os (des)caminhos do seu voto da urna à Câmara dos Deputados” (Representatives of whom? The (un-)path of your vote at the polls to the Chamber of Deputies) comes at a timely moment. Written in accessible language and free of excessive jargon, the book seeks to show how our electoral system functions to a broader public, beyond the walls of […]