Brazilian Political Science Review

1-39

Authors: Miriam Gomes Saraiva

In recent times the interaction between democracy and foreign policy has begun to be studied and theorized in Brazil. The link between politics and foreign policy is not new, however, the focus of this article is on the shifts that have taken place since the beginning of the democratic regime. Its aim is to identify changes in Brazilian foreign policy based on ideas and political preferences due to alternation of governments; and deconstruct the idea that Brazilian foreign policy is a state policy, limited to superficial changes. Following a discussion of the recent literature about changes in foreign policy, the article maps the changes that occurred between 1990 and 2003 and analyses Brazilian foreign policy behavior towards South America during the Worker’s Party administrations. Based on a comparative perspective, it examines the changes in Brazilian behavior toward the region during the Temer administration. This was the area where foreign policy experienced strongest transformations. Finally, the article briefly points out the changes that occurred in foreign policy towards South America at the beginning of Bolsonaro’s administration. The methodology, especially in relation to the Temer and Bolsonaro administrations, uses press material and interviews with foreign policymakers.

1-35

Authors: Adriano Codato; Rafael Madeira; Maiane Bittencourt

Studies of Latin American political science are centered on analyses of national cases and are based on intellectual narratives about the institutional development and teaching of the discipline. In this article we take a different, more comprehensive and comparative approach. We distinguish and contrast two Latin American political sciences: one native to Latin America and published in journals from five countries in the region, and one foreign and published in journals from five countries outside the region. We use three types of bibliometric measures: 01. reciprocal citations in 23 academic journals indexed in the Scopus database; 02. co-occurrence of terms in titles and abstracts of 5,880 research articles published between 2006 and 2018; and 03. co-citations of authors in the bibliographies of said articles. The network of journals forms a well-defined archipelago with three clusters separated by language (English, Spanish and Portuguese). The community is divided along two main axes: political approaches versus sociological approaches. The study also points out that themes, authors, and methodologies are not significantly different between these two political sciences.

1-37

Authors: Márcia Miranda Soares; José Angelo Machado

This article analyzes the relationship between federative institutions and social policies in the new constitutional order in Argentina and Brazil. It draws on literature and data to describe two characteristics of federalism in both countries and relate this with the equitable advancement of policies such as education, health, and social assistance: jurisdictional centralization, which refers to the capacity of the central government to produce legislation about policy design; and fiscal federalism, concerned with the definition of revenues and social expenditure by the different levels of government. The conclusion is that Argentina and Brazil are example of centralized federalism and that this is not an impeditive to the advance of egalitarian social policies; but there are important differences between them. In Brazil there is greater jurisdictional centralization combined with fiscal federalism that includes centralized and stable rules to compound public revenues and a better definition of social expenditure, which structures more favorable conditions for universal and egalitarian social policies. In Argentina, jurisdictional centralization is lower and is combined with fiscal federalism with ample latitude for bargaining between the federated entities to divide revenue and define expenditure, factors which better accommodate territorially segmented social policies with a lower equalizing potential, as is the case of health.

1-39

Authors: Tulio Chiarini; Fernanda Cimini; Marcia Siqueira Rapini; Leandro Alves Silva

The essay considers the role of big private businesses (BBs) within the Brazilian national system of innovation (NSI). Our question is as follows: How do the innovation practices and political behavior adopted by BBs shape the Brazilian NSI? It is our claim that although BBs play a prominent role in leading innovation nationally, they are not supportive of institution-intensive solutions for strengthening the NSI, and thereby contribute to the creation of a dynamic that we call the ‘low-innovation trap’. The obstacles to escaping this trap are manifold, but here we shall focus on 01. the lack of coordination between actors and instruments within government, 02. the high level of instability in the Science, Technology and Innovation (ST&I) budget, 03. the increasing obstacles faced by BBs wishing to innovate and 04. the lack of correspondence between government proposals and societal demands. Without a strong coalition pushing for it to be upgraded, it is likely that the NSI will remain unfit for purpose.

1-39

Authors: Sören Scholvin; Andres Malamud

Brazil has been labeled an anchor country, a leading area, and a regional power. Yet, even before the crisis triggered by Operation ‘Car Wash’ began, several scholars had called into question Brazil’s driving role in regional integration, stressing political challenges and economic weaknesses that hindered closer relationships among the South American countries. More optimistic research tends to concentrate on initiatives and visions of Brazil’s regional leadership, with lesser focus on obstacles and implementation. We develop the concept of ‘geoeconomic nodality’ to assess Brazi’s impact on South America and shed light on the structural sources of economic fragmentation, namely geographical conditions and their interaction with public policies. A geoeconomic node is the core of economic networks in a geographically delimited system. The flows of the system’s units are focused on the node, enabling it to transfer impulses for development – and reflecting what the concepts on anchor countries, leading areas, and regional powers suggest. Our findings show that long distances, physical barriers, the maritime orientation of core zones of population and economic activity, and the poor state of transcontinental infrastructure reduce Brazil’s geoeconomic nodality. Resource nationalism, volatile public policies, and fluctuating exchange rates contribute to this structural mix, so that the prospects to overcome the obstacles imposed by geography appear dim.

1-20

Authors: Suely Mara Vaz Guimarães de Araújo

This article analyzes the response of Brazil’s National Congress to the Bolsonaro government’s actions in respect of environmental policy, with an emphasis on the role of the active members of the Congressional Environmental Coalition and the civil society organizations that support it. Congress’s three spheres of activity encompass lawmaking, legislative oversight and the budget. The main decision-making processes related to these fields of activity are highlighted and analyzed using a qualitative approach. In general, there is evidence of an appropriate response by environmentalists, the results of which should not be underestimated, but which should have greater reach in view of the gravity of the destruction of environmental protection policy that has taken and continues to take place. The Bolsonaro government has presided over an attempted evisceration of environmental policies by changing non-statutory rules and cutting budgets, but Congress has put the brakes on nationally applicable laws and strengthened Congressional oversight.

1-37

Authors: Matheus Soldi Hardt; Fernando Mouron; Laerte Apolinário Júnior

In recent decades, Brazil has established itself as an important donor to underdeveloped countries. Although the country does not see itself as a traditional donor, its IDC policy, in the context of South-South Cooperation, has increased the country’s international profile as an influential actor in the IDC landscape. However, emerging states, generally classified as middle-income countries, continue to suffer from high levels of poverty, which leads to debate on whether resources used in international aid could not be better used at home. The supply of foreign aid is influenced by public opinion in democratic donor countries; generally speaking, foreign aid is unpopular relative to domestic programs. This article, by means of an experimental design, analyzes Brazilian public support for the country’s IDC policy and engages with the emerging literature on Brazilian public opinion and foreign policy issues. It thus contributes to the discussion about the domestic costs of Brazil becoming an emerging donor. Our findings, based on a national survey of 2276 people, show that most respondents believe the country should reduce or eliminate foreign aid spending. Moreover, support decreases even more when participants are presented with information on how that money could have been used in the domestic realm.

1-36

Authors: José Alexandre da Silva Junior; Leonardo Rodrigues Morais; Ranulfo Paranhos: Albany Ferreira Lima

What are the effects of attempts at reelection on electoral competition? We have tested the assumption that attempts at reelection have a positive and significant effect on electoral competition. We measured electoral competition using two indicators: Imbalance index T (Taagepera) and generalized concentration index (Herfindahl-Hirscham (HH)). We analyzed data on the seven last Brazilian national elections (1990-2014). We employed descriptive (variable measures and times series) and inferential statistics (regression analysis with panel data). Our main findings: 01. the percentage and the concentration of incumbents has a significant and negative effect on the concentration of votes; 02. the interaction between the percentage of incumbents in a given dispute and in a coalition has a significant and positive effect on the concentration of votes.

1-17

Authors: Bruno Bolognesi; Luis Felipe Guedes da Graça; Robert Bonifácio; Wellington Nunes

The first part of the ‘Routledge Handbook of Brazilian Politics’, entitled ‘The Input Side’, is dedicated, as the title suggests, to a societal approach rather than an institutional one with an emphasis on political phenomena and processes. There is a markedly socio-political bent to the book’s treatment of the themes of its eight chapters: corruption; political participation; gender and race relations; religion and politics; social movements; innovative democratic decision-making processes; representation of interests. The makeup of book’s chapters does not follow what might be considered standard for handbooks, i.e. they do not merely set forth an overview of the specialized literature; they also include critical readings of the work and analyses of extensive current databases. The chapter by Senters, Weitz-Shapiro and Winters (2019) addresses the theme of corruption, a perennial leitmotif of Brazilian politics and one that has assumed greater importance in public debate since 2005 thanks to the Mensalão scandal, itself reinforced by the June 2013 protests and Operation Lava-Jato from 2014. The authors seek to provide an overview of attitudinal patterns related to corruption and explanatory factors for them. To this end, they survey a large sample of opinion polls: 69 of them, covering three decades, from 1985 to 2015. Key findings include: 01. sustained growth – from 2005 onwards – of the perception that corruption is the worst of Brazil’s problems, combined with a diminishing perception of the capacity of successive governments to combat it; 02. the existence of a positive correlation between being male, well-off and/or having been asked to pay bribes and the perception that corruption is Brazil’s biggest problem; and 03. the existence of an association between party sympathy and perception of corruption, in the sense that party sympathy for the Workers’ Party (PT) – during the period in which it was in government – is associated with a reduced perception of corruption being Brazil’s number one problem.

1-8

Authors: Wagner Romão

Is it still possible to think about innovations within the context of our battered democracies? ‘The Two Faces of Institutional Innovation: Promises and Limits of Democratic Participation in Latin America’ is a book that pursues this issue and reflects the maturity of this field of study on the topic of institutional participation and democratic innovations. Following an initial period of enthusiasm for these means of ‘deepening democracy’, the context of this work is one mistrust in traditional political institutions around the world and lack of belief in the democratic institutions themselves. ‘Two Faces…’ proposes a path of analysis to assess how democratic innovations, once viewed as intrinsically positive for improving democracy, can actually reinvigorate more democratic practices of political action and government or, conversely, may even decelerate the processes of democratization of political regimes.

7

Authors: Karin Deleuse Blikstad

To bring democracy to a city is to move toward the ideal of the inclusive city – a particular challenge in a world where housing costs and demand for housing are both on the rise, and both factors in the problems of housing affordability and displacement. The notion of an inclusive city entails not only housing interventions, but also the inclusion of civil society in official decision-making. ‘Democratizing Urban Development: Community Organizations for Housing across the United States and Brazil’ focuses on both issues by examining how community organizations seek to influence public decision-making on housing matters, as well as what impacts they have on housing policy in particular, and urban development in general. The book presents a holistic and dynamic framework that helps assess how civil society organizations (CSOs) – or, more specifically, community organizations – operate in order to influence official decision-making. With its comparative case study approach, the book leverages case study methodology to provide rich detail and competent analyses covering four selected cases.

10

Authors: Bianca de Freitas Linhares & Letícia Baron

Written by one of Brazil’s leading proponents of Ernesto Laclau’s theory of discourse, ‘1961-1964: The Brazilian Dictatorship in Two Coups’ presents an innovative conception of the events that led up to a dictatorship that lasted 21 years. A Laclauean perspective permeates the entire work. One can appreciate the discourse of the main actors involved – political groups, unions, social and military movements – through solid documentary analysis in which special attention is paid to antagonistic debates that reveal the construction of opponents. In this polished and incisive book, second place-winner of the Brazilian Association of Political Science’s 2018 Victor Nunes Leal Prize, Daniel de Mendonça revisits his doctoral thesis on the interpretation of the discursive battle that took place between political groups in the pre-coup period.

29

Authors: Lenardo Ramos & Pedro Henrique Schneider Parreiras

The 2008 financial crisis stands out for being a crisis that occurred not in developing countries, but in the core capitalist countries, thus assuming greater proportions and with broader ramifications. In this context, the G20 gained new impetus, and, as a result, several studies have sought to understand not only the crisis but the role of the reformed G20 in the process of resolving it. Despite the relevance of this literature, little attention has been paid to the G20 outreach process, in particular to the growing dialogue established between the G20 and B20 (Business Summit 20), a group that represents the business sector in these exchanges. This article seeks to contribute to a better understanding of the engagement of business elites with the actions taken by the G20 to deal with the 2008 financial crisis – that is, the role of social forces in the (re)construction of contemporary international political economy. It seeks, in a concise and exploratory way, to sketch the relationship between the B20 and G20 in the period between 2010 and 2017, in order to better understand processes associated with the transnationalization of the capitalist class. It starts from the hypothesis that during this period it is possible to identify the constitution of a ‘B20 Nucleus’, constituted by the business sectors present at most B20 summits, and to a large extent based in the countries of the North Atlantic. In this sense, the B20 acts as a point of integration for the global corporate elite.

31

Authors: Cristiane Lucena Carneiro & Ana Figueroa

This article analyzes aspects of two ubiquitous phenomena in contemporary societies: migration and violations of rights to physical integrity. It focuses on violations of rights to physical integrity, such as torture and political assassination, that take place in the countries that migrants leave behind (home countries). This paper explores the association between migration and violent political repression via one observable aspect of migration: transfers of sums of money from migrants to individuals in their home countries. These transfers are called remittances. This article engages with the growing literature on remittances to ask whether remittances influence the protection of rights to physical integrity within migrant-sending countries. An analysis of 21 Latin American countries between 1981 and 2014 shows that remittances are associated with less protection of rights to physical integrity. Our empirical analysis reveals this unintended effect of remittances, which is mediated by political protests and elections. A case study of Haiti illustrates the association between peaks of remittances and repression.

37

Authors: Dalson Figueiredo Filho et al

Despite a widespread agreement on the importance of transparency in science, a growing body of evidence suggests that both the natural and the social sciences are facing a reproducibility crisis. In this paper, we present seven reasons why journals and authors should implement — transparent guidelines. We argue that sharing replication materials, which include full disclosure of the methods used to collect and analyze data, the public availability of raw and manipulated data, in addition to computational scripts, may generate the following positive outcomes: 01. production of trustworthy empirical results, by preventing intentional frauds and avoiding honest mistakes; 02. making the writing and publishing of papers more efficient; 03. enhancing the reviewers’ ability to provide better evaluations; 04. enabling the continuity of academic work; 05. developing scientific reputation; 06. helping to learn data analysis; and 07. increasing the impact of scholarly work. In addition, we review the most recent computational tools to work reproducibly. With this paper, we hope to foster transparency within the political science scholarly community.

1

Authors: Anna Beatriz Leite Henriques

‘International Relations and the European Union’, edited by Christopher Hill, Michael Smith and Sophie Vanhoonacker, is the 3rd edition of a book which is part of ‘The New European Union Series’, by the Oxford University Press. The book is a collection of 20 articles by several authors engaged in research on the European Union (EU), and highlights the importance of creating a link between the internal integration and the policymaking process of the EU, and the development of its international relations 1 in a broader sense. It aims to understand, first and foremost, how the EU produces international action, followed by how the international dimension comes into its policymaking and, in so doing, help identify and enlighten the key elements leading to change in the Union’s international stance.

2

Authors: Kyriakos Kentrotis

This study presents the UN’s narrative in the construction of the post-war world. Spanning a period of more than 70 years, this narrative is described through the parallel narrative of football as the game that everyone can play and win, regardless of size, attributes and abilities. Using the language of football through the words of Eduardo Galeano, the paper reveals a common history with different aspects, which is read largely in the light of Michel Foucault’s thinking. In this respect, the UN is approached as fully adapted to a sovereign rationalism that organises reality by ordering each category of (international) political practice and discourse in terms of surveillance and suppression, while at the same time wielding, through its choice of strategies and techniques, a power that has a reformative and productive side. The basic aim of this study is to demonstrate, through the analogy with football, the dual nature of the UN through its application of technologies of power over the course of its lifelong operation.

3

Authors: Laura Wills-Otero

The book ‘Elecciones y partidos en América Latina en el cambio de ciclo’, edited by Manuel Alcántara, Daniel Buquet and María Laura Tagina, and published in 2018 by the Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas in Madrid, Spain, is composed of 20 chapters, including the introduction and conclusion. Most of the authors have received their PhDs from the University of Salamanca, and many of the chapters include sources of information produced in that institution. The project Parliamentarian Elites (PELA ) , by the Ibero-American Institute, is referred to in almost all the chapters. The ideological index classifying political parties within a left-to-right spectrum, in particular, is widely used by the researchers. It appears that the editors wanted to show the accumulation of knowledge by the Institute, a valid purpose per se, however the use of alternative sources and theoretical approaches would have further enriched the discussions on the book’s topics.

5

Authors: Fabiano Santos, Acir Almeida, Thiago Moreira da Silva

This article offers an explanation for the intensity of redistributive policies from Latin American leftist governments during the so-called ‘left turn’. It challenges the idea that the recent radical leftist governments are the product of region-specific characteristics. Based on theoretical models that analyze the implications of inequality in democracies and the moderating effects of different economic and institutional structures, it argues instead that the left’s redistributive policies were more intense in countries where capital mobility is low and there was no pro-elite legislative veto player. To evaluate this explanation, we offer original evidence from time-series -cross-section regression models of social spending, based on data from thirteen Latin American countries over the years 2003 to 2015. The results show partial support for the explanation: there is strong evidence that social spending decreased with the ideological distance between the president and the pro-elite veto player, but only weak evidence that capital mobility attenuated this effect.

10

Authors: Tamara Ilinsky Crantschaninov

Discussions in the field of urban policy in São Paulo hearken back to Brazil’s first attempts to build its own school of public policy, especially at the local level. The necessity of organizing space, and the community relations that existed there, with a focus on municipalities, from the 1950s on, were the impetus behind the creation of such institutions as the Instituto Brasileiro de Administração Pública (the Brazilian Institute of Public Administration, or IBAP) in Rio de Janeiro and the Centro de Estudos e Pesquisas de Administração Municipal (the Center of Municipal Administration Studies and Research, or CEPAM) in São Paulo. The 1988 Constitution of Brazil established the municipality as a federal entity and shed light on cities’ territories and conflicts, as well as their diverse forms of organization. Despite this effort, there were few academic reflections on urban policy within the field of political science at this time.