Brazilian Political Science Review

8-36

Authors: Carlos Aurélio Pimenta de Faria & Clarisse Goulart Paradis

The “humanistic” or “solidarity-based” trend in the Brazilian strategy of international insertion, adopted after the rise to power of President Lula and considered innovative, consolidated the objective of prioritizing the South-South axis and can be explained by domestic, regional, and systemic reasons. This strategy was put into practice by increasing the international aid granted by Brazil, by transferring resources and technology and by the emphasis placed on conveying to partner countries some of the domestic social policies and programmes developed successfully by the Brazilian government. The aims of this paper are: (a) to look at how this “humanism” and “solidarity” appeared in the discourse of the Brazilian authorities; (b) to discuss the reasons for them and their logic in the national, regional, and systemic dimensions; and (c) to map the initiatives adopted, the preferred partners and areas, the resources used and the intragovernmental connections necessary for their implementation.

62-87

Authors: Fernando Filgueiras

The reliance on courts for addressing public policy questions and political controversies is a central phenomenon in contemporary democracies. The judicialization of politics is the result of a shift in core issues regarding democratic legitimacy, both in the sphere of institution building as well as political culture. Social justice arose as a central variable in the legitimacy of democracies, becoming vital in establishing support towards democratic political systems. This article explores the relation between perceptions on justice, judicialization of politics and how the agency of judicial institutions impacts dissatisfaction with democracy. Based on a survey carried out in the metropolitan regions of Belo Horizonte, Goiânia, Porto Alegre and Recife, it is argued that the discontent towards political institutions in Brazil does not justify the ongoing judicialization process since the perceptions on inequalities place the Judiciary within the citizens’ critical stance towards institutions. Just like other representative institutions, the Judiciary has not been able to mitigate the perceptions on inequalities and the ineffectiveness of the empire of law, being therefore unable to provide a satisfactory performance in regards to the normative ends of contemporary notions of democratic legitimacy and citizenship.

114-140

Authors: Maria Alejandra Nicolás, Rachel Callai Bragatto, Rafael Cardoso Sampaio

This article focuses on the appropriation of the subject of Internet and Politics by Brazilian Social Sciences. To this end, we analysed 299 papers presented at 11 conferences in the areas of Sociology, Political Science and Social Communication from 2000 to 2011 in Brazil. The methodology was based on content analysis in order to map the main authors, research centres, political and technological objects, theoretical approaches, methods, techniques and coverage areas of the papers presented in each of these conferences. Our findings suggest significant growth in the number of studies presented over the last few years, where 40.5% were based mainly on qualitative research and 56.5% had an emphasis on the civil society strand. Finally, our longitudinal analyses indicate some changes in the field, with a growing number of studies carrying out empirical research, and a tendency to focus on more specific digital tools instead of on the Internet in general.