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This paper aims to analyse the role of supreme courts of justice in some of the recent removals from office of progressive "pink tide" Latin American presidents and governments where so-called "new right" governments have taken power. It shows the composition of the supreme courts to be a decisive factor in removing these governments from power. The core hypothesis is that the judiciary may have served as a body for legitimating interruption and dismissal processes led by the legislature in contexts of institutional paralysis (or conflict with the executive branch). To demonstrate this, the case of Brazil is analysed and specifically the role played by the Federal Supreme Court (STF) in the dismissals of Luis Inácio Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper discusses the similarities and differences between neo-developmentalism and neo-extractivism. The evaluation compares Brazil with nine other Latin American countries and is based on a framework that considers both economic policies and their outcomes. On the policy side, it looks at income, monetary, international trade, industrial and mineral resource policies; on the outcome side, it observes the composition of both exports and the Gross Domestic Product. In the end, we argue that neo-developmentalism and neo-extractivism are actually variations of the same development route and may face similar challenges in the long term. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper addresses the issue of whether – in line with the Chinese economic approximation to Latin America during the last decade – the region has experienced political changes in terms of countries' foreign policies, shifting their traditional alignment with the positions of the regional hegemon, the United States. Given this general focus, the research project focuses on evaluating a specific issue of global governance: climate change policy. Here I find a marked difference between the Chinese and the US position, constituting two opposing poles between which Latin American countries must operate. I consider the cases of two countries, Brazil and Chile, in terms of their discursive location between China and the United States on global climate change policy. I was able to identify discursive changes throughout the decade that suggest a political alignment of the two Latin American countries with China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents a general analysis of the relations among United States and Latin America considering issues such as the questioning of the US centrality globally and in the hemisphere, Brazil's policies to the region and the impact of the growing relations with China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper examines the relationship between the performance of Latin American stock markets with their real economies, applying seven econometric models for the cases of Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Mexico. The relationship between stock market yields in these countries and their respective GDPS is examined and compared, applying to the series for each country unit root tests, cointegration analysis, error correction model analysis, Granger causality modeling, self-regression vector analysis, stimulus and response functions, and variance decomposition analysis. The series comprise the following stock markets: Argentina's MERVAL, Brazil's BOVESPA, Chile's IGPA, and Mexico's IPC, as compiled by Economática. The GDP series were obtained from the Cepalstat data base. The series are monthly and are for the period 1993-2005. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents Latin American and Asian perspectives on the biofuels emerging industry. The Brazilian's possibilities of participation on this industry evolution and the involvement on the world trade for ethanol and biodiesel are discussed. Also, an investigation about who will be the main "strategic" partners of Brazil in this sector is made: the huge consumer markets of developed countries or the emerging and also hungry consumers of energy Asian economies? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]