Brazilian Political Science Review

1-34

Authors: Mariana Batista; Felix Lopez

Does ministry type influence profiles in upper-level bureaucracy? To govern, presidents need to 01. maintain control over the content of public policies, 02. make political concessions that earn them enough parliamentary support to see those policies approved, and 03. build or keep in place the bureaucratic competencies necessary to implement them. We argue that the president makes key appointments according to the nature of the policies of each ministry and their centrality in the executive branch’s decision-making process. Employing cluster analysis, we propose an objective classification of ministries into four types: ‘coordination’, ‘redistribution’ (social policy and income), ‘regulation’, and ‘distribution’. We also identify their relationship with the profiles of those who have occupied positions in the middle and upper echelons of Brazil’s federal bureaucracy – what are referred to in Brazilian nomenclature as ‘DAS roles’ (in which ‘DAS’ stands for Direção e Assessoramento Superior) – in the period from 1999 to 2016. Our findings indicate that presidents choose to professionalize the bureaucracy of the ‘coordination’ and ‘redistribution’ ministries, to appoint partisans to the bureaucracy of the ‘distribution’ and ‘regulation’ ministries, and to allocate partisans of the coalition partners to the ministries controlled by those parties.

1-39

Authors: Luis Henrique Paiva; Fábio Veras Soares; Iara Azevedo Vitelli Viana; Flavio Cireno; Ana Clara Duran

Conditional cash transfer programmes have been adopted by several developing countries. Despite their acceptance, the independent role of the conditionalities on education and health remain under scrutiny. We have used an ecological design to study the association between conditionality monitoring and educational outcomes in Brazil’s Bolsa Família programme. As programme coverage (taken as a proxy of cash transfers) and monitoring and enforcement of the educational conditionalities (proxy of conditionalities) are not correlated at the municipal level, this study fits a number of different ordinary least square (OLS) and growth-curve models to explain variation in dropout rates and school progression in basic education in public schools across municipalities. After controlling for a number of covariates, we did not find a significant association between Bolsa Família coverage and dropout and progression rates. On the other hand, monitoring of school attendance was negatively associated with dropout rates and positively associated with school progression (in the OLS models and in the initial status of the growth-curve models). The association between attendance monitoring and the rate of change of educational indicators in growth curve models was not the same, however, suggesting that its possible positive effect on educational indicators are not strong enough to affect a general tendency for these indicators to converge in the recent Brazilian context.

1-16

Authors: Mark Setzler

The similarity of Jair Bolsonaro’s and Donald Trump’s divisive views on a variety of controversial issues has led many critics to argue that Brazilians elected a ‘Tropical Trump’ in 2018. Research on Trump’s election shows that authoritarian, racist, and sexist voters were essential to his narrow victory; however, it is an open question whether Trump’s pathway to power is the norm or the exception among right-wing nationalists. Even though candidates espousing controversial ideas about democracy and prejudice are gaining much electoral support, we know little about the extent to which their voters hold similar views. This study confirms that many Brazilians share Bolsonaro’s ambivalence about democracy as well as his attitudes denigrating women and sexual minorities; however, the degree of congruence between his supporters’ and his own views on these topics played a minor role at most in shaping voter choice. As in previous elections, ideology and partisanship – specifically, attitudes about Brazil’s Workers’ Party – largely explain whether a voter supported him. This finding largely holds across gender and racial boundaries, although white Brazilians appear to have been modestly more inclined than Afro-Brazilians to vote for Bolsonaro if they shared his divisive views.

1-31

Authors: Lucas Toshiaki Archangelo Okado; Ednaldo Aparecido Ribeiro

Theories about political protest point to three sets of variables responsible for promoting engagement in such actions: resources, grievance and values. There is consensus on the importance of resources, but the influence of grievance and values remain inconclusive. Discontent alone is not enough to motivate protest, but in societies at intermediate levels of development, grievance could be an explanatory variable. By contrast, values would have a limited effect, given that value change in developing countries could only be incipient. In view of the new cycle of protest in the region and wishing to contribute to the debate on the subject, we aim to discover what the relationship is between these three sets of variables as regards Latin Americans’ predisposition to protest. Given that these countries find themselves at an intermediate level of economic and social development, it would seem that the primary motivation for protest is discontent, as under such circumstances the relative scarcity of resources presents little obstacle to mobilization. On the other hand, as the societies in question are not advanced industrial societies, the associated low dispersion of emancipatory values would exercise limited effect. To test these hypotheses, we looked at data from the sixth wave of the World Values Survey with reference to Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru and Uruguay. The results suggested that grievance was irrelevant as an explanatory factor. Participation in protests in the region is determined by the mobilization of resources and values.

1-37

Authors: André Luiz Coelho Farias de Souza; Clayton M. Cunha Filho; Vinicius Santos

The aim of this paper is to assess the changes in the foreign policy of Bolivia and Ecuador during the administrations of Evo Morales (2006-2019) and Rafael Correa (2007-2017), taking into account the interaction between domestic and international factors in both countries. Our working hypothesis argues that the reorientation of the foreign policy of these countries was possible due to a connection between alterations observed in the domestic and international spheres starting in the middle of the 2000s. In the internal sphere, the greater political stability resulting from the restructuring of the party system; in the foreign policy environment, an international system more open to the progressive field, allowing a change in the orientation of Bolivian and Ecuadorian foreign policy, based on that moment on the diversification of partnerships with an anti-United States bias.

1-24

Authors: Mauro Oliveira Pires

The aim of the text is to discuss the occupation of the old and new agricultural frontiers in the ‘Cerrado’, highlighting the influence of official policies which, guided by a model of agricultural expansion intensive in capital, technology, and the use of natural resources, directed economic exploitation to ever more distant areas. It looks at the region called Matopiba, as a continuation of the movement of the exploitation of frontiers still covered in native vegetation. It shows that as well as having the general characteristics of the model of agricultural expansion adopted in other areas of the ‘Cerrado’, agriculture in this new frontier had the particularity of being connected to the global phenomenon of rising foreign ownership of land (‘land grabbing’), due to the increased presence of transnational companies and investment funds in the acquisition of areas, fruit of the movement resulting from the financialization of environmental assets (land, water, and forests). Finally, it deals with the implications of deforestation in the ‘Cerrado’, highlights governmental initiatives aimed at confronting it, as well as the political weight of Brazilian agribusiness, which has reduced the margin of action of environmental policies in the biome. It is concluded that the ‘Cerrado’, since it does not have the social appeal and protected status of forest biomes, seems to form a territory of sacrifice

1-32

Authors: Marcos Fanton

This paper offers a systematic reading of justice as fairness. By ‘systematic reading’ I mean an interpretation capable of presenting the rawlsian political conception as a coherent theoretical framework with all its stages of justification. I argue that the concept of point of view allows for this kind of interpretation. In the first part of this paper, I briefly discuss the difficulties of obtaining a comprehensive understanding of justice as fairness from some proposals previously set forth in the literature. In the second part, I make a formal definition of the concept of point of view and expound the main points of view in justice as fairness. Finally, I set out in detail what I will call here ‘Rawls’s point of view’, the starting point of justice as fairness.

1-28

Authors: Luís Falcão

The genesis of this article may be found in Benjamin Constant’s assertion, at the end of ‘The Liberty of Ancients Compared with that of Moderns’, that freedoms must be combined before they can be separated. Possible means to bring about such a union may be found in his works. First, he examines the need for action on the part of citizens and how such action could occur in modern conditions, both from the point of view of the individual and of class. The second part of the text analyzes how moral sentiment, patriotism and well-understood interests are the central components of a union that would guide both action and participation. The formal dimension of the combination of freedoms within institutions is explored, as well as the theoretical aspects of neutral republican power as contrasted with its monarchical counterpart. I conclude that, despite modern and liberal constraints, Constant does not completely abandon the republican tradition, expressed in the active life of citizen and institutions, in the fight against arbitrariness and in the defense of collective self-government by means of laws. This leads us to the observation that the neo-republican view of Constant as insensitive to participation in modernity is gravely limited.

1-18

Authors: Sérgio Abranches

In this article, I provide a brief overview of the importance of biodiversity and its value for Brazil and for the world. This theme will be on the Brazilian and global agendas over the coming decades. In the case of Brazil, vast biological diversity is a clear resource for global influence and a valuable tool of soft power that, along with other resources, constitutes a hugely important asset for the country's economic and social progress. I also briefly examine favorable conditions for the country (other aspects of soft power) and challenges that must be confronted, in particular accentuated by the current national political context.

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.

8

Authors: Marcio Cunha Filho

Elected by the Oxford Dictionary as the word of the year in 2016, ‘Post-truth’ has become an object of study in several different fields. In his homonymous book, Lee McIntyre defines it as the phenomenon whereby “objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief” (McINTYRE, 2018, p. 05) or as “part of a growing international trend where some feel emboldened to bend reality to fit their opinions, rather than the other way around” (McINTYRE, 2018, p. 05). In McIntyre’s view, post-truth refers to the ‘deliberate’ spread of news that is known to be false, which means that there is a project of ideological domination behind it. After all, when an individual’s intent is to “manipulate someone into believing something ‘that we know to be untrue’, we have graduated from the mere ‘interpretation’ of facts into their falsehoods” (McINTYRE, 2018, p. 08). But post-truth means more that the simple attempt to convince others of something that is known to be false: it is an attempt to demonstrate the power to challenge the very fact of truth and to attempt to change facts based on the way crowds react to them. In a word, post-truth is the perception that beliefs and impressions are constitutive of reality, or, as some would put it, constitute an alternative reality. It represents “the very embodiment of anti-Enlightenment principles, repudiating the values of rationalism, tolerance, and empiricism (…)” (, p. 27).

27

Authors: Flávio Pedroso Mendes

This article presents a critical evaluation of the study of military coercion, a field that has gained growing prominence since the end of the Cold War. Its purpose is to analyze what may be the most representative work to come out of this line of research: Bombing to Win: Air Power and Coercion in War, by Robert A. Pape (1996). It will interrogate the underlying premise of the work – one shared by the remainder of the substantial literature in this area – according to which military coercion is fundamentally different from war. This interrogation takes into account the contrast between Pape’s approach (1996) and Carl von Clausewitz’ theory of war (1993). It concludes by identifying what lies at the heart of military coercion and war, and makes two central assertions for the study of military coercion: 01. that military coercion is essentially war and, as such, is a wholly political phenomenon, with results entirely subordinate to politics; and 02. that the occurrences which Pape defines as successful military coercion are nothing more than manifestations of limited war – limited war being one of the two possible forms that war can take.

29

Authors: Carlos S. Arturi & Júlio C. Rodriguez

The development of intelligence and internal security institutions in Portugal and Brazil were directly influenced by the ways in which both countries transitioned to democracy and by the nature of their political regimes prior to the mid-1970s. This article compares these processes, highlighting how Brazilian and Portuguese intelligence and public security institutions and bodies developed over the course of the 20th century, and in particular following democratization of their political regimes. Our analysis examines the main factors explaining the arrangements adopted, and the obstacles and dilemmas encountered in the institutionalization of these services and of the new democratic regimes. The results suggest that the type of transition to democracy is the main factor explaining differences between the two cases. However, more comparative research is needed to deepen empirical and theoretical understandings and to allow for greater generalization about the relationship between changes in political regimes and reforms of coercive and intelligence institutions.

36

Authors: Nara Salles

The ‘salience theory of party competition’ moves on from the ‘programmatic paradox’ imposed by the classic Downsian proximity model and demonstrates that parties compete with each other by means of the emphases they give to certain issues. They do this by leveraging their government programs to shape voter preferences that form an innate component of the electoral process. This phenomenon has been neglected in a Brazil supposedly dominated by weak parties, personality politics and clientelism. This scenario is most pronounced at a local level, particularly in the country’s so-called ‘grotões’ where the electorate is motivated by a desire to meet its basic needs, which has the effect of strengthening client relationships with political candidates. In these areas, the relevance of government programs reaches its nadir. The aim of this article is to investigate this phenomenon in Brazilian municipalities with the lowest Municipal Human Development Index (MHDI) scores. The study is underpinned by two hypotheses: 01. that government programs form an integral component of electoral competition in Brazil and 02. that they are formulated along partisan lines. In order to test these hypotheses, I have performed an analysis of the government programs registered by mayoral candidates running in 2012 and 2016, using the text analysis method that estimates political positions through word frequency (Wordfish). The results fully confirm the first hypothesis but only partly confirm the second.

37

Authors: Pedro Lucas de Moura Palotti et al.

The article aims at understanding the determinants of ministerial turnover in presidential systems. There are essentially three key factors that govern the propensity for ministerial turnover in a presidential system: 01. political ambition – reflected in the individual or collective strategies and tactics employed by the party-affiliated actors represented in the cabinet; 02. the presence or absence of a governing coalition – which has bearing on the degree of ideological distance between the president and such political parties as form part of any governing coalition, with consequences for ministerial scrutiny; and 03. accountability – a determinant in responding to such external pressures as may be brought to bear by public opinion. In order to investigate the impacts of these factors, this inquiry seeks to analyze the new and dynamic democracy of Brazil. Brazil’s presidential system presents interesting features that make it an excellent laboratory in which to test hypotheses concerning every aspect of ministerial turnover. To this end, this paper employs a multivariate methodology, as well as descriptive and survival analyses, based on a comprehensive and original database of cabinet ministers that draws on three presidencies over five democratically elected governments from 1995 to 2014. Among other results, our most original finding was that there is an inverse correlation between the degree of ministerial politicization (political ambition) and ideological distance from the president during political scandals (interaction between the governing coalition and accountability) on the one hand, and the length of ministerial tenure on the other.