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 […]

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 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 study explores the effects of electoral rules on political polarization in the legislative branch of government. Since in Brazil the districts are also the states, and senators are chosen according to the plurality-majority rule while representatives are determined by a proportional rule, the comparison between legislative chambers enables one to test whether the plurality-majority rule induces politicians to behave less moderately, and whether the proportional rule has the opposite effect. To estimate these effects, roll call data from 1988 […]

This article deals with an issue as yet little explored in the vast literature about political participation: the role of corruption in political engagement. It investigates whether the coexistence, the values and the perception of citizens in relation to corrupt practices and actors have effects on political activism, and it verifies the direction in which this is evolving, whether it is in the direction of engagement in or withdrawal from politics. The unit of analysis is the individual, the geographic […]

This article assesses the effectiveness of the 2010 Nagoya Protocol to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) for addressing “biopiracy” of genetic resources; that is, their biotechnological utilization in violation of either the provider country legislation or mutually agreed contractual obligations. Biopiracy is defined as a problem resulting from a distributive conflict between provider and user countries, the practical difficulties of monitoring the utilization of genetic resources in a transnational context, and the pervasive scientific uncertainty about the nature and […]

Using a factor decomposition of the Gini coefficient, we measure the contribution to inequality of direct monetary income flows to and from the Brazilian State. The income flows from the State include public sector workers’ earnings, Social Security pensions, unemployment benefits, and Social Assistance transfers. The income flows to the State comprise direct taxes and employees’ social security contributions. Data come from the Brazilian POF 2008–09. We do not measure indirect contributions to inequality of subsidies granted to and taxation […]

Mendes’s book offers a wide-ranging primer or literature review of constitutional aspects of what may be called the law of deliberative democracy (. This cross-over field of scholarship unites deliberative and legal theory. It should be no surprise that academic interest in this new field is on the rise. The deliberative democratic turn in political theory has often been called a key development in the study of democracy. Yet though deliberative theory makes many assumptions about the functioning of courts […]

What is the need for another book on national development policy in Brazil? In the introduction, the author, a professor of Latin American History at the University of Denver, United States, seeks to undo the impression of a possible déjà vu. He indicates that the book not only includes the extensive literature published in Brazil and abroad on the subject but also an analysis of many new empirical material collected from government and private archives of many Brazilian and American […]

For at least 800 years the wealth of the world was concentrated in those regions that the 20th century called “Third World”. In fact, during this long period, two great nations—China and India—concentrated approximately half of the population and GDP of the world. The 19th century will stage the “Great Divergence”: the West’s fast overtaking of the ancient Asian civilizations (and more generally over the group of countries and regions of the Asian, African, and Latin American continents). The huge […]

Several recently published studies analyze the effects of national conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs, such as the Brazilian Bolsa Família and the Mexican Oportunidades, on presidential elections. Most of them show that these programs boost incumbents’ electoral support among the poor. This research note is the first scholarly attempt to investigate this phenomenon at a lower-level unit of a federal state, by assessing the impact of a municipal cash transfer program on a mayoral election. Specifically, it investigates whether Renda […]

The Brazilian party system presents a paradox. Although the Workers Party (PT) and the Brazilian Social Democratic Party (PSDB) have controlled presidential elections for the last 20 years, their force at the other levels of electoral competition has not grown. The objective of this study is to undertake a discussion of this situation through the 2014 general elections. After attempting to explain why successive challengers have not been able to change the structure of competition for the Brazilian presidency, I […]