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Strong climate institutional governance is necessary for countries to meet their international climate mitigation commitments. This article shows that while South Africa steadily created climate institutions up to 2011, these failed to take hold in the following years. Also, despite the systemically critical energy sector dominating the emissions profile, these climate institutions had no purchase over it. This situation is largely due to South Africa's political economy of energy, which gave powerful actors the sustained ability to block meaningful institutionalisation of decarbonisation in the energy sector. As a result, South Africa's climate institutions play few of the roles expected for successful institutionalization of climate action, with energy institutions instead playing a shadow climate governance role. This case suggests that conceptions of climate institutional governance in countries where single sectors dominate in emissions and power must accommodate the roles of institutions affecting climate outcomes despite this not being their primary objective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What kinds of national climate institutions can solve the governance challenges that the Paris Agreement devolves to them? This article identifies three stages of climate institutions in Brazil, a major emitter of greenhouse gases through deforestation that managed to reduce such emissions for nearly a decade. It shows that a narrow definition of climate institutions that seeks purpose-built state institutions fails to capture important dynamics there, and that such institutions have little direct impact on outcomes. In Brazil's political landscape, national presidents exercise a decisive influence on their climate ambitions and capacities. However, positive and negative feedback loops also brought some effective climate action from the layering of climate purposes into existing institutions, as well as through non-traditional institutions like private governance arrangements for agriculture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

South-South relations have become increasingly relevant for understanding global environmental governance in the 21st century. This article explores the socio-environmental contributions and impacts of Brazilian South-South cooperation for international development. Case studies of its international technical cooperation and the international project finance of BNDES show a mixed picture, with environmental benefits countered by environmental harms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article studies how transnational advocacy networks can influence international development finance. Transnational activists shaped the World Bank's lending by increasing its transparency and limiting its socioenvironmental impacts. Developing countries can now look toward rising powers' national development banks to finance their infrastructure and energy projects. The national development banks' weak transparency and socioenvironmental standards pose a new challenge for transnational activism. Can activists leverage strategies used in World Bank reform to influence emerging power national development banks? We argue that whether a target is a supranational or national institution shapes the deployment and effectiveness of the strategies activists can use for influence. A supranational mandate and structure facilitates the deployment and effectiveness of a direct strategy focused on the transnational level, targeting the bank itself, and an indirect strategy focused on the national contexts of the bank's shareholders and borrowers. In contrast, a national mandate and structure encourages activists to deploy influence strategies solely in the context of the lending state. They furthermore make indirect strategies more effective than direct ones. We illustrate our argument by exploiting variation in the success across campaigns of a transnational network created to reform the Brazilian National Development Bank. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does the Brazilian presidential system shape environmental policy there? The comparative literature on environmental policy offers few reasons to think that it might. Most explanations of variations in the quantity and quality of environmental regulation stress levels of economic development or move outside of the nation-state to examine international processes of diffusion and convergence. Other studies look at large macrostructural differences like the contrast between democratic and authoritarian systems and/or the role of non-state actors. This article examines environmental policies and outcomes in three successive presidential administrations in Brazil to develop hypotheses about whether institutional factors should gain a larger place in comparative studies of environmental policies and outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Twenty-first century developmental projects like those of the Brazilian Workers' Party take place in a regulatory context that--at least on paper--demands new scrutiny of their environmental and community impacts. Scholars of the democratic developmental state also argue that development now requires building human capabilities, promoting sustainable development, and seeking community feedback. We examine 302 electricity projects financed by BNDES to see if and when these developmentalist infrastructure projects faced challenging scrutiny on environmental and community impact grounds. 29 percent generated organized community opposition, extended licensing processes, and/or legal action. These were most common for large projects and projects where community and state actors worked together in blocking coalitions. We conclude that the ideals of the democratic developmental state are more compatible in theory than in practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines developments in the renewable electricity sector in Brazil and China since 2000. The two countries share many interests with respect to solar and wind power, but institutional differences in state--business relations led to different outcomes. In China, in a context of corporatist state--business relations, state interventions were more far--reaching, with the state coordinating with state-owned banks, offering large financial and investment incentives to state-owned or state-connected enterprises. By contrast, in Brazil's public-private partnerships, state support to promote renewable energies was shaped by a stronger preference for competitive auctions and stricter financing rules. The differences in state-business relations help explain the observed developmental trajectories in wind and solar power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses Brazilian politics, with a particular focus on the dynamics among the country's political parties. Details on the relationship between the Workers' Party (PT), the Brazilian Social Democratic Party (PTSB), and the Brazilian Socialist Party (PSB) are presented. Other topics include sub-presidential elections, political coalitions, and economic conditions in Brazil.

The article analyzes the impact of the south-south finance on the environmental and labor protections in the recipient countries. The south-south finance is the international lending provided by the China Development Bank Corp., the Exim Bank of China and the Brazilian National Economic and Social Development Bank. The commercial interests and the strategic economic and political concerns of the Chinese and Brazilian development finance are also explored.

The BASIC countries (Brazil, China, India, South Africa) have played a major role in recent climate negotiations. We argue that a focus on identities—both their individual national identities as emerging powers and their joint identity as the BASIC coalition of emerging powers—is useful for understanding the coalition’s negotiation stances and the larger negotiation dynamics between 2009 and 2011. BASIC countries maintain a hard defining line between themselves and developed states in terms of their climate obligations but accept some differentiation between themselves and other developing countries, thus adding a destabilizing third category of countries to the climate negotiations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study examines how Brazil operationalised a renewed developmentalist project during the democratic period, and especially during the presidency of Lula da Silva. We use an original data set of 2,115 loans made by the Brazilian National Development Bank (BNDES) between 2002 and 2011 to show elements of both change and continuity with Brazil’s developmentalist past. Large loans continued to flow to many of Brazil’s historic large firms and industrial sectors – as reported widely – but the data also show significant numbers of smaller loans to firms in all sectors, as well as renewed support for internationalisation and innovation. We conclude that BNDES’s lending reflects less a wholly new model of developmentalism than it does a developmentalist strategy that has been renewed and updated for the challenges and opportunities of a more market-oriented economy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

As South-South trade gains new weight in global exchange patterns, will environmental protection be enhanced or endangered? Environmental economists are generally optimistic that trade will lead to greater environmental protection, but see less chance of that in South-South trade; political economists make opposite arguments on both points. This article shows that South-South trade is dominated by a small set of fourteen countries, with most Southern countries continuing to be natural resource providers. Case studies of Brazil's trade with China and with its South American neighbors reveal a policy framework that supports both of the opposed arguments: Southern countries can and do consider the environmental impacts of their production and trade, but strong counter-forces limit that effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the international negotiations on climate change policy obligations for the emerging countries China, Brazil, South Africa and India (known as BASIC) from the 1990s through the early 2010s. Particular focus is given to the question of international environmental law's impact on the right to economic development of Brazil and South Africa. International negotiations regarding developing countries' greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, including in relation to economic development, are discussed.

Assessing the changing role of the emerging powers in global climate change negotiations, with special attention to Brazil, we ask why they have agreed to voluntary reductions at home without formalising those commitments in ways that might persuade other large emitters to make similar binding commitments. We argue that for very large emitters, the climate issue does not evince the ‘global commons’ logic often attributed to it. Instead, since their actions can directly affect climate outcomes alone or in small groupings, large emitters are more responsive to domestic cost-benefit calculations, making international commitments based on shifting interest group pressures at home. In Brazil, a coalition of ‘Baptists and bootleggers’ found principled and interest-driven reasons to support new climate commitments after 2007. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The G-77 has historically organized the participation of developing countries in multilateral environmental negotiations. This article analyses the impact of a new coalition of emerging powers -- Brazil, China, India, and South Africa as BASIC -- on the G-77's role in climate governance. While there are important benefits for both sides in their relationship, I argue that the G-77 is also disadvantaged in several concrete ways by the BASIC countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do societies make complex choices about concrete energy alternatives? Can citizens play effective roles in balancing risks and benefits? This article proposes that energy choices can be best understood as the result of a balance of power between state-society coalitions that aim to either block or enable the project. Environmental licensing and financing decisions are two decision points where the coalitions face off-and where energy projects go forward or are stopped. The article demonstrates that environmental licensing has become an unexpectedly stringent process in Brazil, with both formal opportunities and historic practices increasing the influence of blocking coalitions. Yet case studies of the Belo Monte hydroelectric dam and massive new petroleum reserves in the 'pre-salt' region show that blocking coalitions emerge inconsistently in the same institutional context, illustrating the hazards of relying on public mobilization for addressing certain kinds of risk situations. An 'anticipatory state' may also pre-empt mobilization by proactively responding to the concerns blocking coalitions are likely to raise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 1978 when Juan Linz posited his fears about the "perils of presidentialism," presidential democracies have been less likely to break down. Nonetheless, presidents continue to confront challenges. Between 1978 and 2006, 30 percent of all democratically elected presidents worldwide faced serious efforts to remove them from office, and 12 percent were forced out before their terms ended. While scholars have explored the sources of these crises, focusing on their effects is equally important. If such crises have profound consequences, then even with regime collapse not at issue, presidentialism would remain associated with normatively bad outcomes. Yet if challenges or failures have minimal effects, then early presidential exit may represent an underappreciated equilibrating mechanism. The evidence indicates that the challenges and falls in Latin America cause only superficial and ephemeral damage to democratic governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article takes up the question of whether civil society organizations (CSOs) can and do act as mechanisms of representation in times of party crisis. It looks at recent representation practices in Argentina, Bolivia, and Brazil, three countries where political parties have experienced sharp crises after several decades of mixed reviews for their party systems. At such moments, any replacement of parties by CSOs should be especially apparent. This study concludes that the degree of crisis determines the extent that CSOs' representative functions replace partisan representation, at least in the short term. Where systems show signs of re-equilibration, CSOs offer alternative mechanisms through which citizens can influence political outcomes without seeking to replace parties. Where crisis is profound, CSOs claim some of the basic party functions but do not necessarily solve the problems of partisan representation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses issues related to presidentialism and presidential falls in South America. In a presidential system, presidents inevitably stand apart and above other political figures because of their special powers and special sources of legitimacy. The shape of these powers has been on the political agenda in South American countries nearly constantly. South America is unusual in the extreme flexibility of its presidential terms, especially in contrast with the classic case of U.S. presidentialism.

This article explores the role of environmental concerns in free trade areas made up entirely of developing countries. It surveys the environmental institutions of Mercosur, the Common Market of South America, and its member states. It also presents a case study of the recently terminated negotiations over a regional environmental legal instrument as an example of collective environmental decisionmaking. The article concludes that all the environmental components of the agreement are weak, and have even been downgraded in recent years. Even so, national environmental protections have increased during the years of the Mercosur agreement, and some regional actors are poised to join their northern counterparts in opposition to any potential free trade area of the Americas that does not include environmental provisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the environmental movements and politics in the La Plata River basin. Information on the boomerang strategy; International norms and domestic environmental institutions in Brazil and Argentina; Details on the Hidrovia project.

Examines how developments in the civil society arena are linked to processes of democratization and economic liberalization in Latin America. Definition of the conceptual territory of democratic representational regimes; Discussion on mobilizing structures of civil society organizations; Conclusion.

In this article, we evaluate whether Latin American participation in international arenas reinforces traditional divides between state and society in global politics or transforms state-society relations in ways compatible with the concept of global civil society. We examine the participation and interaction of Latin American nongovernmental organizations and states at three recent United Nations conferences: the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development, the 1993 World Conference on Human Rights, and the 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women. We conclude that Latin Americans are full participants in any emerging global civil society. Their experiences at the 1990s issue conferences closely track those of NGOs of the Northern Hemisphere, notwithstanding the much more recent appearance of NGOs in Latin America. At the same time, Latin Americans bring a regional sensibility to their participation in global processes that reflects recent political developments and debates in the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analyzes states' claims and bargains at the United Nations Conferences on the environment (1992), human rights (1993), and women (1995). Revision and extension of Litfin's (1997) notion of bargains among components of sovereignty; Sovereignty claims and bargains.

The article reviews the book "Globalization and the Environment: Capitalism, Ecology and Power" by Peter Newell.

An obituary is presented for political science scholar and teacher Gary Bryner.

The article examines how states organize themselves internally to address climate change. Topics covered include the definitional categories for climate institutions, the ways that states address three core climate governance challenges, including through coordination, building consensus, and strategy development, and the ways that institutions and national political contexts influence and shape each other.

This article examines three common generalizations from the literature on Latin American environmentalism. The validity of these generalizations, structured as hypotheses, is tested with four case studies from Costa Rica, Mexico, Venezuela, and Brazil. The first generalization is that tensions arise between international environmentalists principally concerned with wildlands conservation and national environmentalists engaged in a broader array of local and domestic issues including urban environmental quality and access to natural resources. The second is that environmental groups in Latin America are elitist in structure and participant base. The third is that the particular tactics employed by environmentalists will be closely tied to the relative openness of their nation's political system. Through a cross-disciplinary case study approach we find the first two hypotheses quickly break down upon closer inspection, while the third is supported. We suggest a modified framework for interpreting environmental activism in the region, one that weighs the role of the state as well as the competing strategies employed by grassroots, private voluntary, and professionalized environmental groups. Latin American environmentalism is highly diverse, presenting many faces in different time periods and different countries. Developing one general theory of environmentalism in Latin America is impossible, but more specific categorizations of the middle range may be achievable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]