Brazilian Political Science Review

3 - 38

Authors: André Marenco

This article intends to analyze the institutionalization of political science in Brazil through the expansion of the graduate system and evaluation process, which promoted research and scientific evaluations of institutions with Master`s and doctoral degree programs by an assessment model based on peer reviews and the rating of scientific production. The focus here is on Political Science in comparison with its neighboring disciplines, Sociology and Anthropology. We attempt to consider the timing of the process of academic institutionalization of Political Science, as well as its consequences for the consolidation of the field nowadays.

66 - 94

Authors: Marcelo M. Valença & Gustavo Carvalho

Journalists and policy analysts have highlighted the emergence of Brazil as a regional power. However, little attention has been paid to its foreign policy strategies. Brazil's rise to prominence in world politics represents the historical culmination of a foreign policy featuring two main strategies – persuasion and consensus building – both of which emphasise the use of soft power. We analyse four current foreign policy initiatives: the campaign for a permanent seat on the UNSC; the development of a nuclear submarine; Brazil's leadership of the UN peacekeeping mission in Haiti; and government support for Brazilian multinationals. We suggest a growing tension between these initiatives and the two strategies identified above. These initiatives reflect the view current among some policymakers that if Brazil is to rise as a global power it must play by the rules of great power politics.

8-32

Authors: Leticia Pinheiro, Gabrieli Gaio

This article aims to analyze Brazil’s policy towards South America during Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva’s government by discussing what kind of leadership the country was able to perform in the region during this time. The authors examine the role played by the policy of International Cooperation for Development on such regional leadership. The central argument is that although Brazil has performed the role of a regional leader, there is a need for distinguishing leadership for regional matters – inwards regional leadership – from leadership for global issues – outwards regional leadership. The article argues that inwards regional leadership was in fact successfully performed by Brazil in South America, mainly due to its role as a Development Leader. On the other hand, such leadership for regional matters did not always allow Brazil to act on behalf of the entire region on the global arena. Nevertheless, the Brazilian diplomacy left behind the belief that, in order to have global protagonism, the country should use South America as a regional launching platform. Instead, Brazil has been making use of global coalitions such as IBSA and BRICS to boost its global role.

48-70

Authors: Lígia Mori Madeira

The aim of this article is to investigate the institutionalisation of the state Public Defender’s Offices before and after the reform that granted independence and new functions to the Public Defender’s Offices in Brazil. We attempt to understand these processes based on theories of judicial empowerment (ideational and governance perspectives), analyse them in the Brazilian states by means of an analysis of two indicators in three different time periods (before, during and after the reform) and verify to what extent the formal (de jure) advances were involved in the exercise of autonomy in the states. The analysis reveals that in spite of the formal achievement of independence, the majority of state Public Defender’s Offices are not actually independent and there is a great gap between what the laws stipulate and what actually happens in the public provision of access to justice in Brazil.

94-118

Authors: Fernando Mourón, Francisco Urdinez

This paper looks at the main finding by Amorim Neto (2011), namely that Brazil’s power explains why it distanced itself from the country that had once been its great ally in the first half of the last century. We propose an alternative explanation grounded on the realist literature in IR. Ultimately, we seek to determine whether the variable has behaved in the same way for other South American countries, searching for independent variables that could help us explain a visible pattern in the region: the increasing distancing from the United States (USA) at the United Nations General Assembly. We want to contribute to the debate initiated by Amorim Neto (2011) and Schenoni (2012) for future research in the recent field of quantitative analysis of Brazilian Foreign Policy. Using Panel Corrected Standard Error analysis in ten South American countries from 1970 to 2007 we empirically prove that the lower the power gap between a South American country and the U.S., the lower its alignment with the USA in the UN General Assembly voting.

8-33

Authors: Adriano Codato

This article describes the legislative process of the Administrative Department of the state of São Paulo (DAESP) during the Estado Novo dictatorship and seeks to answer three questions: i) what were its real attributions? ii) what was its place among the state-level government agencies? iii) what was its role in the dictatorial regime’s public decision-making structure? Ordering and interpreting information on the DAESP’s deliberative process will allow us to establish whether or not it exercised power (understood as the capacity by those who controlled it to impose their preferences), what was the magnitude of this power, what type of power was exercised, over what and whom. The frequency of its meetings, the coordination of the agendas of the dictatorial State’s apparatuses involved in the decision chain, the activism of each councillor of DAESP and a sample of the legal opinions produced by it between 1939-1947 were all analysed. The findings can be summarised into three propositions: i) DAESP was not a decision-making arena per se as it did not make important decisions, but instead produced a huge amount of decisions regarding the formal aspects of the decree-laws issued by the Interventoria Federal (appointed governors); ii) therefore, the president of the DAESP did not have greater political or bureaucratic power than the interventor, and iii) although the Department mimicked some legislative routines, it cannot be considered a substitute of the state legislature.

58-79

Authors: Daniel de Mendonça

This article is a reflection on normativity in the field of political theory, with the ontological dimension found in Ernesto Laclau’s discourse theory as a presupposition. We base ourselves on the premise that, as a political theorist (rather than a political philosopher), Laclau has developed a political theory with great analytical applicability, which is also significantly useful for thinking about the role and limits of political normativity. We sustain that the normative, widely understood as a set of precepts or politically desirable situations, has a limited place in the area of discourse theory. In order to carry out our proposal, this paper is divided into five parts. Firstly, we deal with the post-foundationalist position found in Laclau’s thought. Following that, we present him as a political theorist. We then analyse the notions of ideology and discourse, central to the political ontology present in discourse theory. Following that, we discuss antagonism and dislocation, categories used to explain the incompleteness of social meanings, according to Laclau. Lastly, in the light of the ontological presuppositions presented, we seek to establish the possibilities and limits of political normativity, bearing in mind the discourse theory developed by him.

109-126

Authors: Álvaro de Vita

In Elements of a Critical Theory of Justice, the Uruguayan political philosopher Gustavo Pereira (2013a) does an admirable job of combining, in an original theoretical formulation, contributions for reflection on the nature of justice in a democratic society, deriving from two distinct traditions of contemporary political philosophy. One tradition is the “Critical Theory” of society, as expressed in writings by the contemporary heirs of the Frankfurt School, especially Jürgen Habermas, Karl-Otto Apel and Axel Honneth. Let me call the other tradition “post-Rawls theories of justice”. At least for the aims of the present article, this latter broad category can include the theoretical formulations of authors who have significant differences with Rawls, such as G. A. Cohen, Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum. The idea is to propose a “critical theory of justice” or, we might say, a conception of “critical social justice.” The basic elements of this conception are extracted from theoretical perspectives that belong to these two traditions and are then articulated “in a new and systematized fashion, in such a way that the new theory can overcome the shortcomings of the original theories and express a higher commitment to application” (PEREIRA, 2013a, p. 05). The intellectual ambition of this effort can hardly be underestimated. Regardless of how one appraises the success of this project by judging it according to its most ambitious aspirations, the discussion developed by Pereira to specify the “elements” of his conception of critical social justice makes this book highly relevant for students of normative political theory, especially those concerned with social justice issues.