Brazilian Political Science Review

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Authors: Maria Ligia Ganacim Granado Rodrigues Elias

This paper explores a theoretical and political approach to discuss the idea (and ideal) of freedom. This approach is built through a dialogue between different theoretical views, especially Isaiah Berlin's concept of freedom as non-interference, Philip Pettit's idea of freedom as non-domination, and Nancy Hirschmann's constructivist freedom. It sustains that the idea of 'non-oppression' is a useful approach to consider freedom in its complexity. Reading freedom from the 'key' of oppression allows us to think of not only 'spaces' of freedom, but also who is free. This 'key' relates freedom to freedom of choice and, at the same time, indicates the necessity of non-domination and attention to the construction of choosing subjects. This paper intends to emphasize that the choices take place in contexts, and these contexts involve relationships, emotions and values. They can be understood as a subjective aspect linked to choice; however, we want to highlight that social standards, structures of power and social meanings are what shape this subjectivity. The social construction happens constantly, quietly and every day, and must be considered whenever we discuss freedom.

23

Authors: Victor Araújo, Thiago Silva, Marcelo Vieira

This study focuses on the degree of political dominance exercised on cabinets by the executive chief in presidential systems. According to a debate that began in the 1990s, presidential systems are characterized by a non-collegial decision-making process, led by and personified in the figure of the president, in contrast to parliamentary systems where a joint decision-making process is prevalent. The key argument of this research note is that, although the majority of presidents have the constitutional power to remove cabinet ministers, the executive decision-making process in presidential systems is not necessarily vertical or based on a non-collegial process. By building a new index, we reveal a significant variation in the executive power exerted by presidents over their cabinets. To classify the degree of political dominance of presidents over their cabinets, we analyzed the rules of cabinet decision-making processes as defined in 18 Latin American constitutions.

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Authors: Marcos Paulo de Lucca-Silveira

In The Idea of Justice (2009), Amartya Sen presents an approach to justice that seeks to make comparisons based on social realizations. This approach focuses attention both on real political-social institutions and on people's behaviour, as well as other potential influences affecting the degree of justice existing in a given society. The new theoretical proposal advanced by Sen (2009) differs then from the theory of justice formulated by John Rawls (1999a) and other contemporary theorists. In the eyes of the Indian author, the theory formulated by Rawls searches for solutions to questions of perfect justice and suffers from problems of feasibility and redundancy. In this article, I argue, centring attention on the question of the appropriate primary subject of social justice, that the critique and subsequent proposal for change of the subject of justice presented by Sen (2009) can be judged mistaken. From a liberal-egalitarian perspective, the primary subject of social justice should be the basic structure of society as formulated by Rawls. Hence I explore the idea that Rawls's option to focus on this subject is directly associated with this particular conception of social justice. I also look to show that Sen's (2009) critique of the redundancy of contemporary theories of justice can be considered implausible. I argue that an ideal theory, such as the one formulated by Rawls, is central to practical guidelines for actions that seek to lessen injustices in real life situations.

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Authors: Vicente Palermo

The debate about the operation of Brazilian political institutions is far from conclusive. It could hardly be different, since current Brazilian democratic regime is only 30 years-old. This article updates a previous one, published in 2000, in which I discuss different and rival interpretations on the functioning of the Brazilian democracy. Some new works argue that a 'dialectic synthesis' of those strands has been recently produced. This article demonstrates this argument is not accurate. Instead, my main argument is that, in spite of rich analyses, new evidences and some displacements, the interpretations and paradigms guiding that debate remain the same. On the other hand, in spite of the solid position of the interpretation sustaining how the Brazilian political system ensures governability, the current institutional debate goes far beyond this paradigm by setting new themes and approaches. To demonstrate this argument, the article presents the evolution of such debate.