Figure 01 shows the ‘separate tables’ that shape the thematic communities within Brazilian Political Science. This network comprises 761 nodes that represent, through shared words, specific concepts or notions. The edges (represented by the lines in the graph) denote connections among these nodes, regardless of the direction of these connections. In total, the network encompasses 50,000 connections with an average degree of 131.4 connections per node. The modularity metric (M) informs the ‘clusterability’ structure of the network, identifying subgroups by shared affinities. In accordance with existing literature, M values below 0.2 suggest highly interconnected nodes and overlapping groups. In the present context, the M value of 0.115 indicates that the words within this corpus have a notable cohesion around a specific subject.

As expected, the first network lacks a clear division of topics (PARANYUSHKIN, 2019) given that it represents a single field of knowledge. However, there is a reasonable degree of specialization and well-established organization within the 2013-2020 period, forming five clusters. These clusters are depicted in Figure 01 by different colors. In counterclockwise order: blue, red, green, pink, and orange. These five clusters make up the thematic communities of Brazilian Political Science.

However, these clusters are intersected by four major structuring axes. The data in Table 03 shows these axes, based on three different measures: State, political theory, institutions and public policies. Essentially, these four terms form the backbone and structure of the entire discipline in Brazil. They hold centrality primarily because they represent the most ‘popular’ themes, i.e., they have the highest number of connections with other themes (degree centrality). Nodes characterized by high degree centrality – indicative of global influence – assume pivotal roles in disseminating information within a network.

Table 03

Node	Degree centrality (global influence)	Node	Betweenness centrality (main ‘brokers’)	Node	Closeness centrality (shortest path)
state	653	state	0.0359	state	0.8765
theory	629	theory	0.0331	theory	0.8529
institutions	627	public policies	0.0278	institutions	0.8510
public policies	624	institutions	0.0260	public policies	0.8482
case	609	case	0.0250	case	0.8342
national	601	democracy	0.0238	national	0.8269
data	581	national	0.0226	data	0.8093
government	580	government	0.0203	government	0.8085
hypothesis	574	data	0.0180	hypothesis	0.8033
democracy	567	politicians	0.0174	democracy	0.7974

Source: Elaborated by the authors.

This measure should be complemented by two others: ‘betweenness centrality’ and ‘closeness centrality’. ‘Betweenness centrality’ measures the influence a node wields over the flow of interactions (or information) with other nodes in a community. In our case, these four terms act as ‘bridges’, connecting other elements within the network, functioning as brokers intermediating the entire system. Without them, certain portions of the network might become isolated or experience reduced communication.

‘Closeness centrality’ serves as a metric to quantify how closely connected a node is to all other nodes in the network. Metaphorically, closeness centrality reflects how rapidly information can spread from one node to all other nodes within the network.

The data in Table 03 has been arranged in descending order based on the degree centrality of the nodes, with the other metrics following the same distribution.

‘State’, ‘Political Theory’, ‘Institutions’, and ‘Public Policies’ emerge as the most prominent and frequently occurring axes. That is, these nodes play a crucial role in sustaining Brazilian PS as a disciplinary field, serving as shortcuts that connect various specific themes, singular research problems, and objects of study within the discipline.

The term ‘State’ stands out as the most significant in this network, reflecting the historical development of PS in Brazil. In general terms, from the 1960s to the 1980s, analyses of the State and institutions primarily adopted a macroscopic approach. Initially, the scholarly literature until the 1980s “primarily focused the macro-characteristics of the Brazilian State. It delved into topics such as its relationships with the business sector, its role in shaping a modern political order, and the development of national capitalism” (MARQUES and SOUZA, 2016, p. 323). However, since the 1990s, there has been a shift towards a more specific approach, adopting an institutionalist perspective, that views the State apparatus and government institutions as active participants in the formulation of public policies.

Next, we will discuss how PS in Brazil is structured around five research domains, which are articulated from the four axes outlined above.

Figure 01 depicts five communities, providing a more detailed view of the data compared to the previously mentioned four major structuring axes (‘State’, ‘Political Theory’, ‘Institutions’ and ‘Public Policies’). Each cluster represents a set of research objects that vary both thematically and, subsequently, methodologically (Figure 02).

The PS network in Brazil is segmented into five clusters. Three of them, ‘State, government, and international relations’ (blue) situated at the top left, ‘political parties and elections’ (pink) spanning the center to the right, and ‘political theory' (orange) at the top, collectively account for 73.4% of the nodes in this network.

The size of each word (‘node’) reflects its weighted degree, that is, ‘its relative importance within a given cluster’. Thus, the larger the word in the network, the greater the ‘local influence of the term in a specific cluster’. The ‘lines’ that form the graph or network are the edges (or links, ties). They establish connections between words. The more lines starting or arriving at a given word, the more intense and frequent the relationship between them.

Table 04 provides a breakdown of this data, showing the relative size of each cluster according to the percentage of nodes and edges and the central research themes of the T&D.

Table 04

Cluster color	Predominant theme	% nodes (N)	% edges (N)	Central terms within the cluster*
Blue	State, government and international relations	25.6% (195)	7.8% (3.914)	state, national, government, economic, strategies
Pink	Parties and elections	24.3% (185)	10% (4.998)	politicians, parties, elections, legislative, president
Orange	Political theory	23.5% (179)	6.7% (3.366)	theory, democracy, historical, society, rights
Green	Social actors, participation and public policies	19.3% (147)	6% (3.027)	public, actors, participation, agenda, municipalities
Red	Institutions	7.2% (55)	0.9% (480)	institutions, power, federal, decision, trajectory

Source: Elaborated by the authors.

Note: *For a comprehensive list of the top 10 terms within each cluster, see Appendix A.

The blue cluster encompasses research on the State, development, government, as well as specific investigations focused on international relations and foreign policy¹⁶. The strong semantic connection between these terms/themes indicates the endurance of a very traditional topic in Brazilian PS, namely the role of the national State in driving the country’s economic development.

Unlike the more traditional association found in Brazilian Political Sociology, which tied ‘State’ to ‘social class’ (and consequently to broader processes of social domination), in this context we find an association between ‘State’ and ‘development’.

The presence of International Relations (IR) in this cluster encompasses an older and more traditional research agenda, which focuses on foreign policy, foreign trade, international agreements, etc. However, this comes at the expense of newer research themes. Recent developments in IR research in Brazil have shown a greater emphasis on subjects such as migration, race, and decolonial and post-colonial issues (OLIVEIRA and RODRIGUES, 2023). The substantial presence of T&D from institutions such as USP, UERJ/IESP, and UFRGS in our analytical corpus (accounting for 36%) reinforces this ‘State-centric’ bias. Terms that exemplify this IR agenda include: agreements, bilateral, ministry, security, diplomacy, national, interdependencies, dependence (see Figure 03 of Appendix A). The experts we consulted also noted that these PGPs tend to prioritize more traditional research themes, unlike International Relations PGPs where a new generation of researchers have been reshaping the discipline’s agenda.

The pink cluster, located at the center and to the right of the graph, is associated with T&D on ‘parties’, ‘politicians’, ‘elections’, ‘legislative’. This community holds significant importance within Brazilian PS, as it accounts for the largest number of publications in journals and citations in the area (LIMONGI et al., 2016). Despite the enduring crisis of political parties as a representational arena, this topic has not been relegated to a secondary study object. The term ‘elections’, the fourth most relevant term in this cluster according to the weighted degree (refer to Table 07 of Appendix A), symbolizes the weight of research conducted on electoral competition from both institutional and behavioral perspectives, representing a continuation of the research agenda that emerged in the 1970s, pioneered by prominent figures in Brazilian PS (LIMONGI et al., 2016). In turn, the ‘legislative’ node demarcates the subarea of ‘Legislative Studies’, which emerged in the 1990s with a focus on the relationships between the Executive and Legislative powers (FIGUEIREDO and SANTOS, 2016). This cluster also includes descriptive studies on the profiles of Brazilian parliamentarians, particularly congressional deputies, which gained further prominence in the 2000s and 2010s (COSTA et al., 2021) (see Figure 04 in Appendix A). International comparisons are notably absent from the T&D devoted to political parties, which remain sporadic and rare within the field (BRAGA and SPECK, 2021). There has been a different trend in research concerning Brazilian political institutions (Executive-Legislative relations, presidential system of government, congressional decision-making, government coalitions, etc), which involves “moving away from the limitations of country-studies towards analytical and theoretical contributions to the broader understanding of these topics” (INÁCIO and ROCHA, 2021). However, we did not verify this trend based on the data available in the T&D in our analytical corpus.

In the orange community, the preponderant nodes are ‘theory’ (with a degree centrality of 629) and ‘democracy’ (567). These nodes establish among themselves one of the main relationships in the cluster with an edge weight of 576, one of the highest in the entire network (see Table 08 in Appendix A). While this group of words represents the field of Political Theory, it also includes feminist theory, political thought, and the history of concepts. The prominence of the ‘democracy’ node may be a Brazilian particularity. According to the expert interviewed, in Anglo-Saxon countries, many of the studies conducted in Brazil would align more with theories of justice rather than democracy. Furthermore, there is a prevailing prejudice in the community against ahistorical approaches to political theory, and theories of justice and normative theories are ahistorical. Terms like ‘premise’, ‘norms’, and ‘values’ are usually associated with normative theory and analytical approaches, but they had a relatively limited presence (see Figure 05 in Appendix A). The substantial size of this cluster was somewhat unexpected, and it may be attributed to contingent factors: Our selected PGPs have well-established research lines in political theory (USP, IESP (formerly IUPERJ), UFMG, UFRGS¹⁷, in addition to UFPel, and are among the oldest and most traditional PS programs in Brazil. Additionally, research in this subarea often requires minimal funding costs. Given that these institutions account for almost 50% of the total T&D analyzed, we should not overlook this data.

Another notable aspect of this intellectual configuration is the decline of Marxism within the field. As per the expert interviewed, “Marxism has lost battles to critical theory, historians, and post-structuralist theorists. It has also been overshadowed by post-colonial and decolonial theorists, who employ Derridean [reference to French philosopher Jacques Derrida] and Foucauldian anti-universal terminology and also identify as anti-capitalist” (ASSUMPÇÃO, 2023).

In the green cluster, the central node is ‘public’, with a degree centrality of 624 (refer to Table 03 above). This node represents T&D on public policies, which have a longstanding prominence in Brazilian PS. Accompanied by the node ‘case’, with a degree of 607, a common characteristic in this subarea are case studies focusing on specific objects located in a particular time and space in Brazil. The edge weight between these two terms is 628, indicating a strong connection, and the weighted degree is high (see Table 09 in Appendix A). The connected words in this cluster highlight studies on actors and participation, as well as topics related to agendas, governance, management, and the implementation of public policies at the municipal level (see Figure 06 in Appendix A). Following the end of the military dictatorship (1964-1985) and in the wake of the redemocratization process, there has been a notable emphasis on the theme of public policies, particularly concerning citizen participation and the role of social movements as crucial elements in the policy formulation process (ALMEIDA et al., 2015; DAGNINO, 1994).

The cluster reflects the more traditional pattern of public policy studies conducted in Brazilian PS programs. However, it is worth noting that from 2015 onwards, as mentioned by the expert interviewed, there has been a growing emergence of PGPs focused solely on Public Policy in institutions such as USP, UFPE, and UFRGS. This specialization has led to a diversification of research themes and an evolution in the methodological and theoretical debates. However, our study corpus did not yet reflect these novel developments. The absence of specific terminologies from the field, such as ‘advocacy coalitions framework’ or ‘punctuated equilibrium’ suggests that these analytical models have not have been fully integrated into the T&D on public policy produced in most PS postgraduate programs.

In the smallest community, represented in red, the node ‘institutions’ takes center stage and plays a structural role within the network (degree centrality of 627), with significant connections with central nodes in other clusters, as indicated by its betweenness centrality and closeness centrality values (see Table 03 above). This cluster primarily comprises studies on the relationships between different State powers, with a particular emphasis on the Judiciary (see Table 10 of Appendix A). The Federal Supreme Court, in particular, is a prominent subject in this cluster, reflecting the increasing interest in this topic within Brazilian PS (KOERNER and TOMIO, 2021). It is important to clarify that in this context, the term ‘power’ does not refer to the abstract concept but rather to specific administrative branches of the State (such as the ‘Judicial Power’, for example). The older and more consolidated research agenda of Brazilian PS, particularly related to the Legislative branch or the interactions between the Legislative and Executive branches, is situated within the pink cluster dedicated to ‘Parties & Elections’.

Lastly, one of the experts we interviewed made a significant general observation: The clusters in the thematic network tend to mirror the division and classification of the five subareas of PS according to the CNPq Classification of Areas of Knowledge¹⁸.

Figure 02 shows the four major methodological communities in postgraduate studies. This network comprises 267 nodes generated from the lemmatization process. These nodes are connected by 25,661 edges, with an average degree above 192 connections per node in the network. The modularity value in this case is M = 0.054, which is lower than the value found in Figure 01. This means a high degree of cohesion in the network as a whole. In this case, it indicates that the network is relatively homogeneous in terms of methodology, showcasing a significant level of shared scientific terms and approaches among researchers in the field.

The terms with the highest centrality in the methodological network align with the major nodes in each cluster of the thematic network (Figure 01): ‘State, government and international relations’ (State, Gov. & IR), ‘Social actors and public policies’ (Actors & PP), ‘Political theory and institutions’ and ‘Parties and elections’ (Parties & Elections). These nodes act as reference hubs within the methodological network (Figure 2). Essentially, each research topic is directly related to particular approaches and methodologies.

Table 05 offers an overview of the themes that concentrate the connections in each cluster and the primary research methods associated with them.

Table 05

Cluster color	Predominant theme	% Node (n)	% Edges (n)	Predominant methodological terms	Frequent verbs
Orange	Political Theory	31.8% (85)	11.4% (2,937)	historical, problem, concept	comprehend, discuss
Pink	Parties & Elections	30.7% (82)	10.6% (2,733)	hypotheses, data, model	explain, compare
Yellow	“Political communication”	22.1% (59)	4.6% (1,187)	qualitative, content, quantitative	interview, collect
Blue	State, Gov. & IR; Actors & PP; Institutions	15.3% (41)	2.6% (677)	case, conditions, economic	analyze, identify

Source: Elaborated by the authors.

The orange cluster represents the field of ‘Political Theory’. Within this cluster we find terms such as ‘understand’, ‘historical’, and ‘concept’. This points to a subarea characterized by an interpretative approach, closely tied to the study of political thought, ideas, concepts, and discourses (refer to Table 11 in Appendix B). As noted by one of the experts we interviewed, within this subarea, theory serves a comprehensive rather than explanatory purpose, which explains the use of terms such as ‘understand’ and ‘discuss’ to describe the research procedures commonly employed in this type of study.

In Figure 02, the pink community represents the theme ‘Parties & elections’. Within this community, we find a predominance of empirical-quantitative terms, such as ‘model’, ‘measure’, and ‘factors’ (refer to Table 12 in Appendix B). The term ‘factors’ here may refer to motives, causes, or reasons. The connections between these nodes indicate a preference for hypothesis testing (the term ‘hypothesis’ is central in the graph) and research methods that rely on statistics. These methodological preferences are characteristic of this subarea. Among the experts we consulted for our research, there is a consensus regarding the growth of empirical studies in Brazilian PS, particularly since the 1990s. The increased emphasis on empirical rigor in national PS can be attributed, as one interviewee suggested, to institutional incentives. These include a greater focus by PGPs on providing robust methodological training to students, heightened publication requirements in field-specific journals, and competition for funding from scientific funding agencies, with organizations such as the São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP). Placing significant emphasis on methodological rigor when evaluating research proposals.

In the yellow cluster, situated to the right of the graph between the orange and blue clusters (better visualized in Figure 10 of Appendix B), the node with the highest centrality is ‘methodology’, which connects to the central thematic nodes of the network. The connections between ‘methodology’ and ‘qualitative’ and between ‘methodology’ and ‘quantitative’ (refer to Table 13 in Appendix B) reflect the academic writing culture within the field. However, as indicated by the experts interviewed, the mere presence of these terms does not guarantee the rigorous or effective application of these techniques in the T&D. According to Soares (2005), there is often indiscriminate and poorly-informed usage of this terminology. Consequently, the expression ‘qualitative research’ is frequently employed without much rigor. Within this cluster, there is a notable concentration of keywords related to ‘political communication’ research, particularly studies focusing on digital media. This hints at the possibility of a new ‘table’ emerging in the future, even though it has not yet accumulated a substantial number of T&D to establish a distinct presence in the thematic network. The relatively young status of the UFPR PGP (constituting only 08% of the T&D in our analyzed corpus), where this research agenda holds importance, serves as evidence of this development.

The blue cluster in the methodological network encompasses three thematic nodes: ‘State, Government & IR’, ‘Actors & PP’, and ‘Institutions’. All three communities share the same methodological terms. The nodes ‘analyze’, ‘identify’, ‘case’, and ‘observe’ indicate a preference for predominantly empirical research (refer to Table 14 in Appendix B). According to the experts we interviewed, certain areas, such as International Relations, still tend to rely on descriptive research with small N and a prevalence of case studies (PEREIRA and LOPES, 2021). In State studies, specific terms such as ‘mechanism’ or ‘conditions’ are common in techniques such as process tracing. On the other hand, the field of Public Policies, as per the expert’s opinion, leans more toward the use of mixed methods.

The size of each word (‘node’) reflects its weighted degree, that is, ‘its relative importance within a given cluster’. Thus, the larger the word in the network, the greater the ‘local influence of the term in a specific cluster’. The ‘lines’ that form the graph or network are the edges (or links, ties). They establish connections between words. The more lines starting or arriving at a given word, the more intense and frequent the relationship between them.

The future challenge for the Brazilian PS community is to increase the number of comparative studies and causal explanations. The fact that empirical-quantitative studies practically only use simple frequencies suggests that there is much room for improvement. However, a thorough examination of the contents of these T&D would be necessary to determine the actual applications of research methodologies and techniques.