Brazilian Political Science Review

26

Authors: Marco Cepik & Gustavo Möller

This article compares the intelligence systems of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. Three questions drive the research: How are the national intelligence systems organized? How is power distributed among organizations in each country? What are the organizational risks? By employing Network Analysis to publicly-available data on intelligence agencies, collegiate bodies, and supervising organizations, authority relations and information flows were mapped. Regarding organizational configuration, similarities were found between India and Russia, as well as between China and South Africa. Brazil differs from the four countries. As for the power distribution, in Russia, Brazil, and India intelligence is subordinated to the government, and shows more centrality in the cases of China and South Africa. Finally, Russia runs the highest risk of having an intelligence system less able to adapt to strategic circumstances, at the same time being the most resilient among the five countries. Likewise, China has the highest risk of a single actor being able to retain information, acting as a gatekeeper. Network Analysis has proved to be a useful approach to promote a comparative research program in the Intelligence Studies field.

28

Authors: Bernardo Frossard Silva Rego & Ariane Cristine Roder Figueira

This article analyses the interaction between Brazilian companies and government in the context of foreign policy, observing the state's support for the internationalization of large Brazilian civil construction firms. The results show that over the years these companies had privileged access to the Federal Executive, including civil service agencies. One consequence of this system of channelling demands through the Executive was to demote the Legislative branch to a secondary role. This pattern of interaction changed following the restoration of Congress's decision-making capacity, prompting the sector to diversify its areas of influence, focusing in particular on the Congress. To expand internationally, construction firms interact with the government primarily through the Executive, specifically via the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Itamaraty), which provides technical and diplomatic support, and the Banco Nacional de Desenvolvimento Econômico, which supplies funding. The main argument of this article is that foreign policy should be examined through the relations between state and non-state actors in a multitude of decision-making arenas, taking into consideration both domestic and international factors.

28

Authors: Mariana Batista

Portfolio allocation is the keystone of coalition government analysis. It constitutes the fundamental payoff in coalition formation, providing access to government decision-making. However, are all portfolios the same or have the same weight in government decision-making? This research note presents a measure of portfolio differences based on three dimensions: policy, office, and budget. Factor analysis is used to generate a composite indicator of portfolio importance in Brazil from 1999 to 2014. Results show that portfolios vary significantly in importance in each of the three dimensions, meaning that a ministry of little importance in one dimension can be very important in another. With policy, office, and budget combined, the most important ministry is the Ministry of Finance and the least important is the Ministry of Fishery. This indicator is the first step to summarize the differences between ministries that can be used to inform empirical analysis about coalition formation and governance in Brazil.