Brazilian Political Science Review

39-74

Authors: Mariana Batista da Silva

Is there Executive interference in the regulatory agencies after its formal establishment as independent bodies? Under what conditions the Executive chooses to interfere in the agencies? This paper analyses the degree of interference in Brazilian national regulatory agencies and provide a tentative explanation for the variation in the degree of interference. The basic hypotheses is that credibility costs, the degree of formal independence and the preferences of presidents are crucial factors affecting the extent to which presidents interfere in the regulatory process. A random effects model is estimated with panel data for the period between 1997 and 2008 covering ten national agencies. The degree of interference is operationalized by an index built using factor analysis. The data suggest that there is political interference, which varies across agencies and over time. The results show that the preferences of the president and some issue area specificity matters for the choice that presidents make regarding the interference in the regulatory process.

94-116

Authors: Márcia Miranda Soares & Pedro Neiva

This paper analyses intergovernmental rel ations in Brazil based on the dynamics of t he distribution of federal d iscretionary transfers to the states between 1997 and 2008. The theme becomes more relevant when we consider the process of fiscal recent ralization that has taken place in Brazil, particularly from 1994 on, and the importance of discretionary transfers for state budgets. Our purpose is to ident ify which factors can account for a higher or lower state’s share in overall resources, by building on two explanatory dimensions: t he partisan-political and the social-redistributive. The first one examines how the political dynamic affects resource allocation; the second, if discretionary transfers exhibit a redistributive character across states. Our findings show that a governor’s partisan alignment w it h the president or with the president’s government coalition are important factors in determining higher resource allocation for his/her state, and that states that are overrepresented in the lower chamber are favored. We have also found a redistributive character associated with federal discretionary transfers, favoring states with lower Human Development Index (HDI) rankings.

35-53

Authors: Cristiano Fonseca Monteiro

A first wave of theories on globalization suggested that because of new competitive pressures, national economies would converge into a single market economy model. Economic rationale would overcome politics, and political choices would be restricted to the implementation of a set of policy prescriptions aimed at favoring private investment, so-called “market-oriented reforms”. More recently, research based on economic sociology and historical institutionalism has shown that the implementation of market-oriented reforms at national, regional and industry-level has been characterized by a variety of outcomes, and politics has played a major role in producing such variety. The analysis of official documents, newspaper articles, interviews and other sources related to the main actors in the Brazilian air transport industry shows that the implementation of market-oriented reforms in this industry has also been marked by a complex political dynamics, comprising conflict, dispute, negotiation and compromise. This political dynamics has forged a trajectory that is unique in relation to other economic sectors in Brazil, and to the same industry in other countries. This paper concludes that politics has to be seriously taken into account in the debate on the search for efficiency and competitivity in the Brazilian air transport industry.

77-104

Authors: Ana Paula Tostes

This article systematically investigates, in a comparative perspective, the support for new extreme right-wing political parties (ERPs) in national elections across the Western European Union countries (WEU). The objective of the research is not to explain why or how the ERPs platforms can be convincing and persuasive, but to describe conditions that contribute to identify when this has occurred. Since the reactionary nature of ERP discourse met the spreading phenomenon of Euroskepticism, a vote for ERP candidates and platforms is considered Euroskeptic voting behavior. Our hypothesis is that the greater the political power a member state enjoys in European Union institutions, the fewer the incentives for voters to support ERPs. To test this hypothesis, a great amount of data was organized and a set of econometric exercises was established using panel data with fixed effects. Given the intertemporal variation captured by the panel data with fixed effects, it is possible to assess the political conditions for the growth of electoral support for ERPs across the WEU as a function of three classes of variables: representative variables, economic variables, and variables of perception. The findings suggest that representation in European institutions has greater impact on ERP support than economic circumstances.

129-152

Authors: Flávio da Cunha Rezende

This essay discusses the problem of endogenous institutional change in the context of the new historical institutionalism. It reviews the critique of traditional theorizing on institutional change and offers a comparative analysis of innovative approaches to institutional change on the contemporary agenda of historical institutionalism in comparative political science. The analysis focuses on the logic underlying the conceptual and analytical transformations in the methodological debate of how to expand the explanatory capacity of traditional models by introducing institutional variables in them. We review quasi-parametric models, incremental change models and those models seeking to introduce the dynamic interaction between ideas and institutions. The key argument is that, over this decade, institutional change models, driven by the introduction of new concepts, new modes of theorizing, and new mechanisms of change, have undergone a remarkable analytical transformation. These innovations have allowed political scientists to deal with change endogenously.