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Institutionalists have both argued that institutions are endogenous, yet also analyzed Brazil?s electoral institutions, including open-list PR, as exogenous variables that inhibit national party unity to the point of precluding national party reputations. In an analysis of the two most recent periods of democracy in Brazil (1945-64, 1989-present), the paper demonstrates that in the current period, party leaders are now acting to mitigate the incentives of open-list PR by distributing valuable perks based on the degree to which rank and file vote with the party leadership. Electoral institutions are constant across the two periods, yet party leaders are now acting to promote party reputations, while they failed to do so in the earlier period. The paper resolves this paradox by developing a general theory of electoral competition based on two dimensions: whether voters choose direct (clientelistic) or indirect (programmatic/personal) exchanges with politicians, and whether electoral institutions are party or candidate-centered. The theory yields a four-fold typology of electoral incentives with distinct and observable implications for internal party delegation and behavior. The theory endogenizes electoral institutions to a more general theory of electoral competition, and provides an electorally-based explanation for why politicians chose unmitigated open-list PR in the earlier period, but now opt to modify its anti-party incentives in the current period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes that anti-discrimination litigation in Brazil can be used to further the goal of judicial reform. The main argument made is that, contrary to the views of the law’s critics, the uneven success with anti-discrimination should be attributed to flaws within the institution of the judiciary rather than in perceived weaknesses of the law itself. These flaws are the object of a broad movement for judicial reform to which anti-discrimination litigation can lend its weight. The paper concludes by suggesting that judicial reform requires the awareness of ordinary citizens in civil society about the need for reform, which citizens acquire through anti-discrimination litigation. A brief sketch of the evolution of anti-discrimination jurisprudence is provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to analyze why participation in PKO has different effects in different places. In particular, I wish to explore why similar PK experiences have divergent effects in Argentina and Brazil. In so doing, I attempt to explore the initial conditions and mechanisms through which PK supposedly influence civil-military relations among contributing, democratizing, and developing states. This paper proposes a three-level framework for analyzing the effects of PK participation on civil-military relations. The mechanisms in question are: (1)transitions and need for military missions, (2) foreign and security policy integration, and (3) types of socialization during PK service. Each of these mechanisms allows for variation in PK experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper analyzes the way that neoliberal policy reforms have affected relationships between states, social movements, and political parties. The paper examines three cases from Brazil in the contemporary era: a community movement in a former squatter invasion, legislation and the movement for children’s rights, and participatory structures of policy-making in Belem, Brazil. The paper concludes that neoliberalism, coupled with democratizing changes in the Brazilian constitution (1988), has opened up the state to movement actors. This is an important change in state-movement relationships, which in the past have been characterized by contention and conflict. In the neoliberal era, states and movements can approach each other as partners. While the beginnings of this change are evident, we must proceed with caution so as not to overstate its effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on recent theoretical writings on transnational criminal organizations (TCOs) I will argue illegal networks [INs] that bring together drug traffickers, police, politicians, and civic leaders help to support and maintain criminal activity in Rio by bringing together functionally unique actors who can reciprocally help each other break the law, resist arrest, and build the group trust and localized legitimacy necessary to carry out long term criminal operations. Through a close examination of criminal networks in three favelas in Rio de Janeiro I will add detail to the macro-level studies of TCOs in international relations that will help to explain particular aspects of network functions and the challenge they pose to democratic governance. This paper will support three contentions. First, INs show the importance of moving past a static state-society model of politics. In the context of powerful network organizations that cross state-society boundaries, understandings of social movements and of institutional politics change in important ways. Why, for example, would a senior police officer, long on the take, help to implement policies that would arrest criminals who pay him off? Second, evidence in this paper will show that ongoing criminal activity depends on high levels of trust and legitimacy in certain constrained geographic areas. Counter to much conventional wisdom, this paper will show that criminals depend of social capital, defined as norms of trust and reciprocity, to build up the local legitimacy necessary to prevent arrest and detection. As Alejandro Portes and his collaborators have observed in other contexts, social capital is occasionally used to promote anti-democratic and violent ends. Finally, from a policy perspective, this paper suggests that ongoing problems of violence and crime in the developing world stem from a deep complicity between civic actors, state officials, and criminals and cannot be resolved through simple administrative reform or by only building social capital. The flexibility of these networks and the ability of criminals to work with civic actors enables network members to undermine efforts at repression and local capacity building. By operating in flexible institutions traffickers prevent police from gaining effective intelligence about their activities and they ideally position themselves to corrupt and coopt members of the police and civil society. The structure of networks allows traffickers to incorporate new groups into their criminal operations thereby enabling them to buy off better paid and better armed police or coopt the leaders of new social programs supported by the state. The result is that the more the government invests in repressing trafficking the more powerful traffickers become. Any solution to these problems must focus on the unique structure of localized criminal networks and the needs of particular places where they operate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A conference paper about democracy and defense policy in Brazil is presented which was prepared for presentation at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, from August 30-September 2, 2012. The paper discusses topics including goals of Brazil's foreign policy, Brazil's civilmilitary relations, and the role of the Brazilian legislature in defense issues.

What is the role of presidents in the politics of redistribution in developing democracies? Do other political actors, such as legislators and governors, influence redistribution? Is redistribution shaped by political (that is, partisan) factors or do programmatic criteria play also a part? Redistribution in very unequal developing countries is a divisive issue. Most researchers recognize a crucial role of the state in redistributive politics. Despite this, there is little we know about the factors that shape government redistribution. This paper studies political and economic factors that affect the allocation of interregional redistributive transfers in Argentina and Brazil, two highly unequal countries in Latin America (the world's most unequal region). The focus is on funds with high redistributive impact and over which the central government may have large discretion: public infrastructure. Using original data on federal infrastructure spending for the 24 provinces in Argentina and the 27 states in Brazil (for the period 1999-2011), this paper shows that redistributive politics (in particular, the distribution of infrastructure funds) in developing federations is fundamentally determined by executive politics. The main claim is that presidents use redistributive transfers as a tool to build up sizeable and secure political support. We also found large variation in the relevance of Congress and programmatic criteria across cases, and that legislative overrepresentation is not always a relevant factor to explain redistribution, contrary to findings in the literature on the US and the European Union. We discuss some possible reasons for these results and the implications of these results for the broader comparative debate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines patterns of recentralization in Latin America, which are diverse and are posited to become increasingly important over time. After the fiscal decentralization wave in the region from the 1990s and early 2000s, the future of intergovernmental relations on the continent is likely to be a "reverse wave" of recentralizing change. These recentralizing changes will not be uniform across country contexts, but will differ in extent, nature, and quality. Future studies of intergovernmental relations (including decentralization) in Latin America will require attention to conceptual, theoretical, and empirical advances in the study of recentralization, and this paper works in that vein. The paper theorizes that recentralization can follow multiple different patterns, of which two are highlighted by the cases of Brazil and Venezuela. Brazil shows that where national executives come from conventional institutional backgrounds and furthermore find themselves constrained by the institutional environment (such as democracy, federalism, or constitutional provisions), the form of recentralization is one that builds and rationalizes that institutional environment. Venezuela illustrates an anti-institutional approach to recentralization in which existing institutions are abolished or subjugated to presidential discretion. Both processes may use certain similar recentralizing tactics - most notably institutional layering - but the results differ as a function of executive background, intent, and leverage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

People without identity documents go unrecognized by modern states and therefore cannot access the rights, benefits, and services that they provide. Significant numbers of Brazilians still lack the necessary documentation to enjoy citizenship. Yet since the late 1990s a federal campaign has sought to increase the numbers of Brazilians who possess identity documents. The birth certificate is the steppingstone to all other essential documents. This paper focuses on recent efforts to ensure that as many Brazilians as possible acquire birth certificates. The recent registration campaign even addresses cases of "delayed registration," whereby adults retroactively document their births, many times in an effort to pursue subsequent identity cards and to participate in social programs that require them. The paper first explores why so many Brazilians lack documentation. It then seeks to identify the causes (including the timing) of the major federal mobilization underway to address the problem. Our central argument is that the previous orientation of social policy as developed under the period of ISI (import substitution industrialization) was so focused on "making citizens" of workers in the urban and formal sector of the economy (as well as civilian and military servants) that broad segments of the population remained socially excluded and therefore saw little immediate reason to surmount the many obstacles to obtaining documents. The state did little to facilitate the process of documentation either. Why then the change? We argue that social policies developed in the late 1990s and in the 2000s - specifically those that direct benefits to low income individuals in the informal sector - have both exposed the number of undocumented people in the population and provided a strong incentive for them to acquire identity documents. For example, one key program that addresses childhood poverty, the Bolsa FamÍlia (Family Grant), requires that all family members obtain a birth certificate to become beneficiaries. This conditional cash program, which represents an extension of Fernando Henrique Cardoso's previous federalization of the Bolsa Escola, now serves over 12 million families. Another major program created in the "neo-liberal" era, one that addresses old age poverty, is the Beneficio de Prestação Continuada or Continuous Welfare Benefit. A non-contributory pension program, the BPC grants payments to indigent seniors and younger disabled individuals. In existence since the late 1990s, it now serves over 3 million Brazilians. Application requires the presentation of numerous documents, beginning with the birth certificate. Before these and related policy innovations, many of the kinds of people who are current beneficiaries remained entirely unintegrated into any major social program. This fact contributes to explaining why many poor people did not surmount the multiple challenges involved in applying for a birth certificate or any other identity document. This dynamic, whereby a policy generates incentives for people to acquire other basic elements of citizenship recalls Aaron Wildavsky's (1979) notion of "policy as a cause" in and of itself. Thus, despite the considerable criticism launched at the design and format of many social policies undertaken in the wake of market reform, the "the downstream effect" of documents acquisition represents a highly positive development. Notably, the sequence by which many low income Brazilians are acquiring identity documents represents an interesting inversion of the order that T.H. Marshall wrote about long ago (1950). Rather than first gaining the civic dimensions of citizenship and then acquiring its social aspects, it is the quest for and possibility of social inclusion that is driving the acquisition of civic citizenship for many poor Brazilians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many studies have scrutinized the efficacy of legislative vs. judicial strategies by LGBT individuals and movements as a means to bring about policy change. However, much of what we know about this topic comes from research focused solely within the context of the United States, and very little has looked at this matter within the structural frameworks we see in other countries. This paper examines what we can learn from the struggle for state recognition of same-sex partnerships (e.g. civil unions, marriage, etc.) in the case of Brazil. Interestingly, while GLT movement organizations in Brazil have mostly focused their time and resources on securing this recognition through legislative means, the most progress until now has come from individual petitions in the judiciary. This paper will attempt to explain why this is, focusing on the priority of this issue to the GLT movement organizations, the structure and powers of the executive and legislative branches of government, and the natures of the Brazilian code law legal system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A conference paper about the civil-military relations in the Southern Cone of South America and Brazil is presented which is prepared for presentation at the American Political Science Association Conference, in Toronto, Ontario, on September 2-6, 2009. The paper discusses topics including changing patterns of civil-military relations post-democratization in Argentina, Brazil, and Chile, and the former authoritarian governments in Latin America.

The paper first discusses 2 opposing models of citizenship within Latin American: citizenship as consumption, which reflects the consequences of the pervasive influence of market-oriented reforms on patterns of representation in the context of universal political rights, and citizenship as agency, which would reflect the emergence of alternative forms of participation through civil society and their potential impact on political patterns of representation. The second part of the paper then examines the potential for citizenship as agency to emerge by contrasting the impact of the Popular Participation Law in Bolivia and Participatory Budgeting in Porto Alegre, Brazil. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A conference paper about democratization and redistributive policymaking in Brazil and the Dominican Republic is presented which is prepared for presentation at the American Political Science Association Conference, in Toronto, Ontario, on September 2-6, 2009. The paper discusses topics including the policy impact of democracy, why progress toward redistribution has been much more substantial in Brazil, and redistributive achievements since democratization in the two countries.

A conference paper about the change in voting patterns due to a large scale cash transfer program, Bolsa Familia, in Brazil is presented which is prepared for presentation at the American Political Science Association Conference, in Toronto, Ontario, on September 2-6, 2009. The paper discusses topics including the implementation of cash transfer program by President Lula Da Silva's government and the indirect effects of the program channeled through economic growth.

A research paper about governance patterns of HIV/AIDS medication in India and Brazil is presented which is to be discussed at the Annual Meetings of the American Political Science Association, in Toronto, Ontario, from September 3-6, 2009. The paper discusses topics including the availability of affordable HIV/AIDS drugs in India and Brazil, and the effects of private self-regulation and governmental intervention for the provision of public goods.

How does vote intention in presidential elections vary according to the economic conditions of a country, especially indicators of the financial market? Does the state of the economy, both its fundamentals as well as capital market, affect variation in candidates' percentage of vote intention in national polls? This paper tests how economic indicators influence vote intention in presidential elections in two emerging markets: Brazil and Mexico. The presidential elections of 1994, 1998, 2002, and 2006 in Brazil and 2000 and 2006 in Mexico are analyzed using all poll returns for each electoral period and corresponding economic data. The paper finds that no theory is capable of explaining results throughout the dataset but partisan explanations and Stokes' (2001) categories of alternatives to retrospective voting help elucidate vote intention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing theories of change in campaign strategies predict cross-national convergence in terms of candidates' linkages to voters and the degree of policy focus and cleavage priming in their appeals. However, the prevailing national patterns of electioneering in Chile, Brazil, and Peru have actually diverged from one another since their transitions from authoritarian rule. This paper develops a theory of success contagion that can explain the evolution of presidential campaign strategy in these countries as well as other third-wave democracies. I argue that the first politician to combine a victorious campaign with a successful term as president establishes a model of electioneering that candidates across the ideological spectrum are likely to adopt in the future. Such contagion can occur through imitation as well as the consolidation of norms among campaign professionals. Strategic convergence is less probable in cases of repeatedly poor governing performance, such as Peru. Instead, candidates are likely to choose strategies through an inward-oriented process of reacting against previous errors. This paper draws upon content analysis of television advertising, interviews with campaign staff, and case studies of specific elections in Chile, Brazil, and Peru. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a theoretical framework for the comparative study of the causes and effects of pursuing rights through legal strategies. It then tests that framework on the results of a two-year, five-country empirical analysis of the determinants and impact of judicial interventions in health and education policy. The data gathering effort was carried out by in-country teams of up to five people in each country, using both archival research to build a database of judicial decisions and interviews to explore the implementation and impact of these judicial decisions. The paper first presents extensive original data on the nature and extent of economic and social (ES) rights litigation in Brazil, India, Indonesia, Nigeria and South Africa. It then presents comparative data suggesting the conditions that promote the extensive and successful use of legal strategies. Finally, the paper presents preliminary findings on the direct effects of a law-based strategy, as well as the indirect, aggregate social policy impact of the widespread use of legal approaches to extending ES rights. We argue that three elements combine to produce a wave of judicial demands: a) demand side factors (social organization and resources to pursue a legal strategy) must coincide with b) supply side factors (judicial support and a credible judicial system), in c) a policy context that is propitious for judicial intervention because it is prone to policy-making or bureaucratic failures. We further argue that, with significant exceptions, the direct effects of judicial strategies tends to reinforce redistributive inequities, but the indirect effect often extends the benefits far beyond the initial claimants, with positive, equity-enhancing results.The five countries were chosen so as to include common law countries with aggressive ES rights litigation (India, South Africa) and weak or incipient ES rights litigation (Nigeria), and civil law countries with aggressive (Brazil) and weak (Indonesia) litigation. Similarly, two specific issue areas have been selected for analysis in order to provide within-country variation in the effectiveness of litigation as a means of enforcement: although the findings will, we believe, generalize to the entire range of ES rights, the empirical sections will emphasize the rights to health care and education. A key element in the project is the creation of a cross-nationally comparable database detailing the characteristics and outcomes of ES rights court cases (number of cases, likelihood that plaintiffs succeed, individual or collective action, level of court), and an investigation of impact on the ground in a random sample of up to 100 cases in each country. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In federal countries that have reinstated the popular vote for state governors and in whichfiscal adjustment is a priority, the states have become important players in fiscal control.The paper analyzes the impact of policies of hard budget constrains on the electoralresults for state governors and challenges the hypothesis that state politics in Brazil aremoved only by clientelism, by policies not affecting the status quo (traditional politics)and by the use of public resources to sustain them. The paper tests two alternativehypotheses about state politics. Firstly, hard budget constraints at state level have notchanged the territorial basis of support of the state governing coalitions who haveimplemented these policies. Secondly, the socioeconomic features of the population inthe state electoral districts have not been of any significance in supporting or rejectingpolicies of fiscal control. I argue that state politics in Brazil are driven by severalrationales. Different rationales give room for state politicians to adopt fiscal policies andstill be reelected or elect their candidates for governorship. Three states have beenselected to test the hypoteses: Bahia, Ceará, and Paraná. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What determines the deployment of coercion in Brazil's cities, and how does variation in public security affect local rights? Starting with the concept of a security community, this paper analyzes policing in the city of Recife, seeking to explain is violent and contested nature. The paper argues that the latter is best explained by a combination of extremeeconomic deprivation and inequality, the nature of electoral competition, and the peculiar characteristics of coercive institutions in the city and the state. The paper concludes that the relations in Recife between police forces, other state institutions, and civil society groups appear to resemble what Rothstein calls a "social trap". ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What explains the dynamics of lawmaking? Many researchers have argued that bicameralism is a key institution that increases legislative delay and gridlock. However, there is virtually no research to date on the effects of bicameralism in recently democratized countries. The existing work on bicameralism focuses on the U.S. presidential system and European parliamentary systems. The purpose of this paper is to analyze, taking Brazil as a case, the determinants of the dynamics of lawmaking in a nascent presidential bicameral democracy. In legislative research, surprisingly little work exists that examines lawmaking itself except when individual pieces of legislation are analyzed as case studies. Instead, much of influential quantitative legislative research both in American and comparative legislative studies have focused either on legislative behavior, usually analyzing patterns of roll call voting or on the propensity for gridlock at the aggregate level. In this paper, I take individual bills as a unit of analysis and examine how various legislative rules, preferences of the two chambers, and environments that shift over time affect legislative timings and outcomes in the Brazilian Congress. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why do state government bureaucracies in Brazil exhibit different institutional designs? Why do some states delegate policy-making powers to independent institutions and create rigid institutional rules and procedures for policy making (some of which are enshrined in the state?s constitutions and in legislation which requires qualified majorities for change), while others have kept policymaking informal, flexible, and, as a consequence, less formalized? What are the possible connections between electoral vulnerability of state political elites, institutional design and constitutional choice at the state level? We argue that the main motivation behind this institutional change was the need of the current governments to tie the hands of the next state government administration. In this paper we model the process of institutional choice for the new IRAs, focusing on the role played by electoral competition, vulnerability and uncertainty. Our goal is to explain the political determinants of constitutional choice. We claimed that autonomy enjoyed by IRAs could be interpreted as an intertemporal safeguard for the preferences of an enacting coalition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The movement towards decentralized systems of government in developing countries has affected the manner in which rural public services are provided. Local governments, interest groups and citizens have a far more prominent role in decision making. This paper explores the question of whether an integrated approach toward local level policy decisions is likely to lead to a more equitable distribution of agriculture and environment related public services. We examine the issue of equity by looking at both the spatial distribution of services, as well as the ability of local users to access these services. We argue that the institutional design of the local governance system influences access to public services that citizens require for sustainable production. We compare empirical data from Brazil and Uganda; countries which have taken different approaches regarding incorporating local actors in policy design and implementation. Brazil has applied a comprehensive strategy to achieve the equitable distribution of public services. Municipal rural development councils provide a pluralistic forum for interest group and citizen participation in decision making. The goal of this stakeholder oriented setting is a transparent process of equitably allocating public resources. Though having the same objective, Uganda had taken an alternative approach. Non-governmental organizations and community-based organizations function in a semi-autonomous manner with little intervention or coordination from the central or local government. This is motivated partially by a market oriented approach to stimulating public service provision. This study highlights the role of the local institutional setting in facilitating equity in agriculture and environment public service provision. We provide insights into appropriate institutional designs for crafting equitable and accessible public services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Under what conditions can central governments control or reverse processes of decentralization? Why do some central governments actually push for certain decentralizing moves, when it would seem this concedes power to subnational governments? In this paper I explore developments in intergovernmental relations in Brazil and South Africa since 1994. I conclude that processes of decentralization over the last decade have not always enhanced, but have sometimes actually reduced the autonomy of subnational governments. In both cases, central governments have increasingly worked through bureaucratic channels to earmark the money that flows to the states (estados) and provinces. Central governments in both countries have also recently placed restrictions on the ability of states and provinces to borrow money. The comparison shows that similar changes in intergovernmental relations can occur across countries with different histories and institutions. In limiting or reducing subnational autonomy, strong presidential leverage within governing coalitions was crucial; this leverage can be wielded either in the legislative arena, or within the executive. At the same time, variations across the cases point to an additional causal factor affecting the outcomes in these countries: economic crisis. The Brazilian president’s successful reckoning with a generalized economic crisis gave him leverage that South Africa’s president did not have, and this enabled the more dynamic set of (re)centralizing changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the effectiveness of the legal system in protecting citizens from arbitrary killing from the state. It presents data on the number of state killings in Uruguay, Argentina and Brazil, and on the judicial response to these killings. The analysis includes a discussion of inequality before the law, and calculates the effect of belonging to a certain disfavored social group on the effectiveness of the rights of members of that group. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Early comparativists argued that the level of economic development determined whether voters chose to link themselves to politicians directly based on the exchange of goods for votes (clientelism) or indirectly based on an evaluation of national programs. More recently, comparativists concerned with electoral accountability have favored institutional analysis which examines the degree to which formal rules encourage voters to emphasize national or local concerns in making their voting choice. Empirical findings suggest that neither of these approaches fully captures the key features defining the relationship between voters and their elected representatives. The paper synthesizes the two approaches in order to present a more general theory of democratic accountability. I reformulate early comparativists’ models of how economic development affects voters’ choices for direct (clientelist) or indirect (programmatic) goods based on the fact that voters face a collective action problem in delegating to politicians to provide programmatic goods. This reformulation of the impact of macro variables on voter choice is then integrated with institutional theory to provide a synthesis of both macro and micro variables shaping electoral accountability. The theory yields a four-fold typology based on whether voters choose direct/indirect and national/local, with distinct and observable implications for party behavior. The theory is tested by examining party behavior in Brazil in two periods of democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, our goal is to explain the political conditions under which presidents choose the extraordinary over the ordinary?in other words, why and when do they opt for decrees rather than normal legislation? (We could easily reverse the research question, since it is also reasonable to ask why presidents equipped with decree authority would bother to use ordinary legislation at all.) We explore this question using Brazil as a case study. Over the past century, and especially since the Second World War, a global trend in democratic regimes has been the incremental transfer of policy-making power from elected assemblies to the executive branch. This trend was already well documented in the study of parliamentary democracies, but the explosion of research into comparative presidentialism over the past decade has confirmed its existence even in systems nominally based on the separation of powers (Shugart and Carey 1992, Carey and Shugart 1998). The shift in the relative power of the executive and legislative branches has been accompanied by a proliferation of institutional devices that allow presidents to choose from among a wide range of policy-initiating instruments. These range from direct introduction of legislation in Congress (not available to the U.S. president, but to most others), to expedited consideration of bills (fast-track and urgency mechanisms), to executive orders and rulemaking power, and even to presidential decrees with immediate force of law. As the menu of presidential options has lengthened, the game of executive-legislative relations in presidential regimes has grown more complex. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the new left in Taiwan and South Korea and the renewed left in Brazil and Chile. I contend that the left can no longer best understood in terms of antiquated sociological or economic categories. The new left in East Asia and Latin America is a political project and its politics are embedded in the processes of democratic transition. My argument is simple: (i) Democratization, a variable process of change, leads to different patterns of new left organization. (ii) Meanwhile, the introduction of democracy, a form of governance with universally shared features (irrespective of how the transition to democracy took place), promotes the moderation of the new left across all four cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses Brazilian stabilization policy since 1985 to illustrate the uses of a cultural approach in understanding economic policy change. In the process, it reflects more broadly on the recent re-convergence on culture in the political science discipline, on how cultural explanations relate to other theories of social choice and change, and on what may be the most promising avenues of further research. The argument in brief is that broad cultural explanations are rarely useful, but when culture is combined with interest and institutional explanations in very focused settings, it enhances explanatory power immensely. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recent military regimes of Argentina (1976-83), Brazil (1964-85), and Chile (1973-89) each produced different modes of political justice. The Brazilian military regime used peacetime military courts to prosecute political dissidents and opponents, without ever declaring a state of siege or suspending the constitution. The Chilean regime suspended the constitution and prosecuted people in wartime military courts for the first five years of its rule. The Argentine regime not only suspended the constitution, it largely dispensed with courts and engaged in extrajudicial "disappearances" of presumed opponents. Why did these three regimes, often seen as sharing certain similar "bureaucratic-authoritarian" characteristics, produce such different types of authoritarian legality? This paper argues that the answer lies in the history of military-judiciary relations prior to the key political events that led to the imposition of the military regimes. It also asserts that variation in the mode of political justice under authoritarian rule helps account for differences in the approach to and results of judicial reform after the democratic transition in each case. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Brazil it is the executive that has constitutional exclusive rights to initiate the annual budget. Although the congressional legislators have the right to amend the bill that is introduced by the president, they can only do so if those amendments are compatible with the multi-year budget plan elaborated by the executive as well as with the law on budgetary guidelines. Moreover, Congress may not authorize expenditures that exceed the budgetary revenue. This paper argues that those rules not only restrict congressional action, but also enable the president to preserve at low costs its coalition inside Congress. When the executive is sending the annual budgetary law to Congress, it can either underestimate or overestimate the total revenue for that particular year. Legislators face a condition of asymmetric information since they don't know to what extent the executive's information is accurate. If the president decides to underestimate the total revenue, he/she is clearly signaling to legislators a strong expenditure constraint, which is compatible with an environment of fiscal crises. However, even in such an environment, the Brazilian executive has systematically preferred to overestimate the annual total revenue (especially the amount dedicated to investment, but not those related to operational costs), which has signaled that the expenditure constraint is lower and, as a consequence, legislators would have more space and flexibility for amending the budget. Why has the executive systematically overestimated the budget? Usually individual legislator's amendments to the annual budget are oriented to benefit municipalities where they received the most votes in the previous election. Although legislators have the right to propose individual amendments to the annual budget, it is the executive, who is entitled to determine which amendment will really be appropriated, as the appropriation is contingent on the availability of resources in the national treasury. We show evidence that the Brazilian President rewards those legislators who most vote for his interests by executing their individual amendments to the annual budget and, at the same time, punishes those who vote less by not executing their individual amendments. In addition, it is also demonstrated elsewhere that, ceteris paribus, the greater the amount of individual legislator amendments appropriated by the president, the higher will be the probability of legislator's re-election (Pereira 2002; Pereira and Rennó, 2002). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When are citizens most likely to hold politicians to account for wrongdoing? In a crowded information environment, political accountability can be achieved only if credible information is available and citizens are able to identify that information. In this paper, we argue that the ability to discern more from less credible information is increasing in citizen sophistication. Using data from an original survey experiment in Brazil, we show that all citizens react negatively to corruption allegations, but that highly educated respondents are more likely to punish credible accusations and to overlook less credible accusations. We then show, using municipal-level audit data, that voters are more likely to punish credible accusations of corruption in municipalities with high literacy rates. Our findings suggest a novel mechanism that may link increasing education with control of political corruption: educated citizens are better able to discern and therefore act on credible accusations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 2003, when the Workers' Party took office in Brazil, the federal government has brought big infrastructure projects back to the political agenda, including in the environmentally and socially fragile Amazon region. Unlike the military regime that promoted such projects decades before, the current administration has promoted a discourse of participatory democracy. This paper explores decision-making processes around two large projects in the Amazon region, the paving of the BR163 road and the Belo Monte dam, to examine whether the result has been a more inclusive approach to development projects. Exploring the literature on state capacity helps us identify three kinds of inequalities that interfere with efforts to promote inclusive development: a) between social groups, b) within the central state and c) between territorial center and periphery. We argue that overlaps among these three asymmetries result in uneven state capacity when it comes to implementing projects in the Amazon. This framework helps explain why the government has moved much faster in the construction of actual infrastructure than in the implementation of participatory social and environmental programs that would benefit local communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses a central issue in multiparty presidential systems: the functioning of legislative coalitions and the dynamics of legislative conflict. Since electoral competition has elements of both positive-sum (increase in common support) and zero-sum (exact division of the support) qualities, lawmaking in coalitional systems present unique challenges that may be absent in two-party systems. Using unique legislative data from Brazil, we examine how coalition management and unity affect legislative delay and obstructionism. We find that: (1) coalition management is pivotal for effective governance with respect to both faster legislative approval and less obstructionism; (2) the effect of coalition management depends on coalition size, i.e., it is particularly important when the coalition is small, but its positive effect diminishes as the coalition enlarges; and (3) opposition unity and government-opposition ideological divide impede the legislative process, but their effects are not as large as the effects of coalition management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the first decade after the transition to democracy, Brazil shifted from a highly centralized contributory health system that served only formal sector workers to a decentralized universal system in which subnational governments bore nearly full responsibility for the provision of health services. This paper explores the changes that decentralization has created in the distributive nature of Brazil's health system. I use comparative historical analysis to trace the development of Brazilian health policy along these four dimensions (decentralization, ideological commitment, and fiscal and administrative capacity) and explore their impact on the distributive nature of the health system in two subnational cases Bahia and Sã o Paulo. For health policies to be equity-enhancing--favoring the poor and traditionally disadvantaged societal groups--several conditions are necessary. An ideological commitment to equity must exist on the part of those responsible for health policy and the fiscal and administrative capacity to develop and execute equitable policies is also necessary. The depth and type of decentralization set the bounds of what is possible and commitment and capacity are determining factors for health policy and outcomes. Over the course of the democratic period, national commitment and capacity have increased. For Brazil, enhancing equity in health will require increasing the capacity of subnational governments and ensuring that political actors at all levels are committed to the national health system (SUS). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Latin American nations have undergone dramatic transitions to democracy and open markets in recent decades. Such changes have exposed citizens to high levels of economic volatility and insecurity, while at the same time expanding the possibilities for citizens to hold governments to account and to demand compensation for such hardships. Recent research indicates that even as economic insecurity has risen and social insurance programs have been retrenched, civil society in Latin America has remained relatively quiescent, with low levels of political participation. This paper tests the hypothesis that insecurity (defined as exposure to risk and lack of adequate means to hedge that risk) has a dampening effect on citizens' propensity to engage in different forms of political life, such as attending municipal meetings and neighborhood organizations, and engaging in protest. Data from a 2009 nation-wide survey in Brazil reveal that individuals who have access to more extensive means of risk protection, all else being equal, are systematically more likely to participate actively in the more moderate and sustained forms of democratic politics, such as neighborhood associations and municipal meetings. This is not the case for protest activity, however, which is likely to entail very different calculations of risk and reward. The results of the analysis are preliminary, but indicate a sharp cleavage of insecurity that coincides with widening fault lines of political engagement in Brazil. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines Dilma Rousseff, the first female president of Brazil. The case of Dilma Rousseff presents scholars a unique opportunity to examine the potential representational effects offered by strong women presidents. Through an analysis of original interviews conducted in Brazil, we offer preliminary assessments of how gender shapes her actions on behalf of women's representation thus far. We find evidence supporting the notion for a "Dilma Effect," suggesting that Dilma Rousseff indeed represents women symbolically, descriptively, and substantively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper demonstrates that in Brazil at present there is an urgent need for public policies aimed at the attraction and retention of highly qualified professionals in areas that are strategic for national socio-economic policy. This does not involve seeking to increase of competition for workers in the Brazilian labor market, but to the contrary, promoting the development of strategic industries and advances in the area of science, technology and innovation (ST&I), recognizing immigration as a vector of development for human capital. It is fundamental that public policies aimed at attracting highly qualified immigrants as a form of promoting socio- economic development take into consideration other important axes of immigration policy, such as the analysis of factors which condition migratory flows, the need to guarantee human rights and the integration of migratory populations, and the imperative for the maintenance of national security. These policies should also take into account economic, social and political impacts, from the point of view of the populations from the countries of origin and the destination countries, as well as the migratory populations themselves, in order to contribute to responsible political action. The capacity to create, attract, and retain talents in accordance with a national development strategy is one of the principal factors which determines the success of countries, in terms of their social and economic development in the contemporary world. Most developed countries have specific policies aimed at the attraction and retention of highly skilled professionals in the international market. With the recent increase in governmental investment in education and the development of advanced research in Brazil, the country risks suffering the growth of the so-called brain drain. Moreover, Brazil is now going through a process of demographic transition and needs, in the space of a generation, to promote a process of exponential increase in its indices of productivity. The scarcity of human resources is one of the principal bottlenecks which threatens the economic development of the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China). In Brazil specifically, the results of the lack of proper investment in education in recent decades are now appearing, since investment in education has an incremental nature and takes time to produce results. The attraction of highly skilled immigrants can allow the deficit of proper investment in the past to be overcome, so that better advantage can be taken of the 'demographic bonus.' Due to the recent Brazilian resilience to the cycle of global crises which began in 2008, the country has become an increasingly more attractive destination for migrants, which constitutes an unequalled opportunity to attract talents in the international market. Brazil has received an increasing quantity of immigrants with average levels of skills. Although this has increased the critical mass of the country and generated benefits for some industries, in some cases scarce positions are disputed with Brazilian labor. Nevertheless, as we will see, there are still very few highly skilled immigrants, apt to occupy positions for which there are no Brazilian workers and in this way to accelerate the development of new industries. Brazil should, thus, create policies concerned with immigration linked with national geopolitical and commercial strategies, since migratory flows produce significant ties and can improve relations between nations. However, for these policies to be successful, it is fundamental that institutional integration be expanded and effective tools are created for coordination, the alignment of information flows, the collection and analysis of data and the construction of consensus. In summary, it is necessary to break with the verticalization of bureaucratic structures and the narrow focus on the limits of jurisdiction of the different ministries and bodies involvement in the national policy of the monitoring, administration and control of immigrants. In fact, Brazil could benefit from the creation of a specific agency, capable of catalyzing initiatives, articulating the multiple institutional actors involved in immigration administration, and contributing to achieving its strategic visions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I investigate whether the effectiveness of an anti-corruption agency may increase over time, as its reputation becomes more known. Small anti-corruption agencies may not get to be known by its subjected politicians in the first years. As a result, if one measures the efficiency of the agency in these first years, the result may under estimate the efficiency that such small scale can achieve once politicians adjust to its existence. I test this argument using data from a Brazilian anti-corruption program. Since 2003 a national anti-corruption program has the objective of name and shaming local governments. Because of limited budget, the program cannot investigate every place in every period, so it randomly selects 4% of Brazilian cities every year to be audited. I compare politicians audited in the same time periods that differ in how much they are informed about the program. I suppose that mayors become aware of the program by watching it auditing neighboring cities. Mayors who observed the program auditing neighboring cities in 2003 and 2004 form the "treatment group" of well informed politicians. Mayors who by coincidence did not have neighboring cities investigated in 2003 and 2004 form the "control group" of poorly informed politicians. I then measure how many illicit acts local governments of both groups had committed in 2005 and 2006. According to the data, there is a clear divide in the behavior of those informed as compared to the behavior of those not well informed. The consequence is that small anti-corruption agencies may become more efficient over time, as their reputation becomes stronger and diffuses amongst the politicians in its jurisdiction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A conference paper about the important role of the Brazilian scientific society in the creation of the 2005 biosecurity law. It offers information on the intricate relations between democracy and expertise and brief overview of biosecurity laws history in the country. Moreover, the strategies used by scientists in formulating the research rules on genetically modified organisms (GMO) and human embryonic stem-cell (hESC).

The article presents a research paper which focuses on the consistency and changes in the labor laws and related politics in Mexico and Brazil. It discusses on the labor law reforms and the evolution of labor practices in both the countries, and the efforts of Brazilian labor actors to circumvent legal challenges. It also focuses on the labor relations model of intense state involvement and a prevalence of labor unions in Mexico.

The article presents a research paper which focuses on the association between the pro-democracy movement, dominated by middle-class, and the labor movement in Egypt, and also compares the neoliberal changes and collective mobilization in Egypt, with the changes in Latin America specifically Brazil. It also focuses on the role of labor in democratization in Egypt and Brazil.

This paper analyzes the institutional evolution of the health care system that led to the universalization of coverage and municipalization in the provision of basic health care in Brazil. I argue that a process of state-society transformation in the context of the authoritarian state facilitated the infiltration of the state bureaucracy by reformist groups of society. These activists reoriented the authoritarian health policies toward new goals. In analyzing this case of institutional change, the article advances a gradualist approach to institutional evolution and alerts scholars against the prioritization of critical junctures or locked-in effects in explanations of institutional change or stasis. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I argue that social movements respond to two dimensions of political opportunity in deciding when and how to seek political influence in multilevel governance. One dimension, the degree of access or openness, is already common in the literature on transnational social movements. A second dimension of political capacity - the ability to generate authoritative outcomes - is also important, but much less studied. Both activists and scholars can assess institutions in multi-level governance for their simultaneous placement on these two dimensions. I briefly review the four resulting quadrants and the kinds of strategies social movements are likely to choose in them, discussing trade institutions that might fit in each: strong and open, strong and closed, weak and open, and weak and closed. I use this framework to argue that the Mercosur free trade area fits best in the weak and closed quadrant, and thus it is not surprising that regional social movements have directed little time to this level of governance. I also briefly review the politics of GMOs in the Mercosur region, showing that the politics of GMOs in Brazil and Argentina have surprisingly different patterns of political opportunity for their national movements that have led to very different concrete results. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As Latin America has moved to the left during the last decade, why have the governments of Brazil, Chile, and Uruguay chosen a path of moderate, gradual change, whereas their counterparts in Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador have proceeded with considerable economic and political radicalism? Comparative analysis and case studies of Brazil and especially Bolivia find that economic performance and party institutions do not provide a satisfactory explanation for this striking difference in political approach. Instead, natural resource rents and commodity booms (and busts) play a crucial role. The unearned windfalls produced by bonanzas inspire risk-acceptance among political leaders and common citizens, which can prompt ideological radicalism and political confrontation. By developing this argument and basing it on a novel, cognitive-psychological micro-foundation, the paper seeks to contribute to theories of the rentier state and the "resource curse." ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper outlines the contours of an ongoing research project on the politics of banking-sector opening in Mexico, Brazil, and Indonesia. The project tries to understand why these three countries opened their domestic banking sectors to foreign participation in the 1990s and early 2000s after decades of financial protectionism, and why their governments countries exercised different degrees of control over the opening process. I find that international pressure by itself did not generate significant opening; only when external pressure converged with banking shocks, and sometimes also with domestically-driven ideational change, did significant opening follow. I also find that although the shocks forced major de jure opening in all three countries, in practice, policymakers gradually reasserted control over the opening process and were able to harness foreign capital to advance domestic political priorities. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper explores the connection between democratization, decentralization and subnational policy-making by analyzing the political dynamics behind recent education reforms in Brazil. It seeks to explain variation in the policy choices that were made by state governments in the definition of school governance structures following the return to democracy. Whereas some state governments decided to institute the election of school principals by parents, students and teachers, others decided for the maintenance of opaque and discretionary practices which secured the distribution of school posts according to political criteria. The research relies on primary comparative evidence from three states: Bahia, Ceará and Minas Gerais. The argument is that the institutional choices made by state governments depended on the structure of political competition at the state level, as the introduction of participatory arrangements in the management of schools occurred in those cases where competition among political elites became more frequent and intense following the return to democracy. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The process of re-democratization in Brazil brought about important changes in the judiciary system which significantly expanded the political role of judicial institutions along two important dimensions: 1)The adoption of the highly decentralized system of judiciary review transformed the judiciary, and in particular its highest court, the Supreme Federal Tribunal, into an important political actor, which plays a role in the constitutional control of laws and normative acts undertaken by the executive and legislative branches; 2)In the lower courts, the introduction of collective rights, the creation of new legal instruments, and the founding of new courts broadened access to the courts for collective actors, creating incentives for social organizations to adopt new patterns of legal mobilization and judicial action.The same process that led to this dual expansion of the Brazilian judiciary's role has contributed to a growing interest in the courts among academic analysts. Today there are a reasonable number of theoretical and empirical studies of the structure and performance of Brazil's courts along these two dimensions. Nonetheless, these studies appear to have been driven by two distinct sets of normative goals: on the one hand, the need to consolidate democracy and effectively implement civil and social rights, leading to the conclusion that we need more and better judicial intervention in political life; and on the other, the need to ensure governability and to remove obstacles to the political majority and to state reform, leading to the conclusion that we need a judiciary in the classical liberal mold, less interventionist in public policies and more efficient at producing juridical security for market-oriented reforms. In analytical terms, these distinct critical and normatively oriented views have produced conclusions that differ little from the basic premises of each type of study, and in a circular fashion, have almost always returned to their original assumptions. My argument is that these studies have been driven by distinct normative models of democracy, which reserve very different roles for the judiciary in relation to society, the market and the political system. This paper analyzes the expansion of Brazil's judiciary in light of the processes of re-democratization, as well as economic and political reform. It seeks to provide a critical assessment of the state of research on the judicial system and the manner by which normative models of democracy have shaped contemporary studies of Brazilian courts. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we analyze the distribution of pay and changing trends of inequality in Argentina and Brazil, illuminating the specific winners and losers, by region and by economic activity (sector). In both countries we find that inequality rose in the neoliberal period, but that it declined following the severe crises of neoliberal policy, in 1993 in Brazil and in late 2001 in Argentina. This period of post-neoliberalism is characterized in both countries by a decline in the economic weight of the financial sector and a recovery of the position of the civil service. In both countries, the rise in inequality leading to the crisis produced an increase in the relative position of the major metropolitan centers; this positional advantage also declined modestly in the post-crisis recovery period. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to understand the origins of diverse fiscal structures in federations, focusing on the importance of the distributive pressures emerging from the territorial structure of inequality, the rent-seeking incentives that emerge from different patterns in the regional incidence of inequality, and the way in which different institutional contexts privilege incumbents at different levels of government. We focus in the developing federations of Argentina, Brazil, India and Mexico, presenting a new dataset on the territorial structure of inequality. Analytically, we bring up a common logic through which the distributive tensions associated with different structures of inequality shape fiscal structures. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]