Resumo em Inglês:

This essay suggests a theory of strategic legislative agenda control. It argues that a single party can effectively set the agenda under majoritarian gatekeeping rules without obtaining majority or even plurality status. The agenda-setting party need not be the median party in the assembly nor supported by executive-led parliamentary coalitions. The Mexican Chamber of Deputies provides a case study of how majoritarian gatekeeping and political context establish the conditions necessary for one-party-led agenda-setting in a fragmented congress with or without enduring coalitions. The failure of opposition coalitions to roll the ‘Partido Revolucionario Institucional’ evinces that party's ability to set the agenda through strategic coalition formation since 2000. High levels of party unity combined with strategic positioning have allowed the PRI to do so. The strategic nature of the PRI's coalition-making is documented and analyzed in the context of its historically pragmatic approach to coalition-making. The argument is supported by roll-call data analysis, using WNOMINATE, WRice scores, and roll rates.

Resumo em Inglês:

John Stuart Mill and José de Alencar lived at the same time and wrote about the same issues, and yet the connections between their political theories remain unexplored. Seeking to offer a comparison of both theories, this article argues that reading Mill's “Considerations on Representative Government” (1977b) vis-à-vis Alencar's “Systema representativo” (1868) brings to the fore two aspects of Mill's political theory that Mill scholars usually overlook: 01. political representation is endowed with constructivist power; 02. epistemic democracy and agonistic democracy can be mutually reinforcing. A comparative reading between Mill and Alencar reveals that representation does not simply reproduce or mirror pre-given ideas and identities, but also constructs them. In addition, it reveals that epistemic democracy is not at odds with agonistic democracy. To be sure, both Alencar and Mill were agonistic democrats precisely because they were epistemic democrats. They recognized conflict as a fundamental aspect of democracy because they believed political disagreement weeds out inaccurate information, expands the knowledge of politicians, and leads to the construction of more reasonable, wiser decisions. Thus, Alencar and Mill thought political parties were crucial to democracy insofar as they injected conflict into political debate.

Resumo em Inglês:

This article seeks to understand the demands of the security sector in Latin America, in the context of reforms promoted by international aid agencies in the region. The hypothesis of this study is that international aid programs focused on Security Sector Reform (SSR) in Latin America have been generic, and have overlooked recipient countries’ own reform agendas. Latin American perspectives on SSR have been inferred from Organization of American States (OAS) documents. Information on international assistance for SSR programs was gathered from the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) database for the years 2004-2014. The analysis shows that assistance programs are not generic and that the profile of projects, resources allocated and countries targeted differ greatly according to the donor. The study also reveals differences in programs funded by bilateral and multilateral aid agencies in the region, which fits with the findings of previous studies, showing that, in general, programs funded by multilateral agencies are more attentive to local needs than those promoted by bilateral agencies. By contrast, programs funded by bilateral aid are less demand-driven and more guided by donor interests.

Resumo em Inglês:

This article examines the contribution of Bolívar Lamounier to Brazilian political thought. Our main argument is that, by replacing nationality with freedom as the defining criterion of the real, Bolívar Lamounier offers a liberal interpretation of Brazilian political thought, in direct contrast to the nationalist tradition formulated by Oliveira Vianna. In this view, it is the liberals who are the realists, while nationalists and Marxists are idealists. As we shall see, this interpretation is normatively committed to one side, that of liberalism, guided by the aspiration to establish institutions that will foster the autonomous flowering of the market and civil society in opposition to a state prone to authoritarianism.

Resumo em Inglês:

This article proposes a new interpretation of the regional distribution of votes in the dispute for legislative offices in Brazil. The literature has traditionally understood regionalization to be evidence that politicians deliberately create zones of influences in certain areas. We argue, however, that other dimensions of the Brazilian electoral system, notably the large size and magnitude of electoral districts, reinforce the information that reaches voters and adds value to geographic aspects, such as the home city of the candidates, accounting for the spatial concentration of votes. Using new, previously unpublished, data on the hierarchy of cities, the results for São Paulo between 1998 and 2014 confirm this interpretation. This result suggests a new theoretical understanding about how the Brazilian political system works by introducing another explanation for how certain areas become influential, thereby revealing new research agendas.

Resumo em Inglês:

Recently in Brazil, public policies have begun to be implemented to reduce discrimination and promote the inclusion of excluded social groups based on a specific individual characteristic: race. However, there is little public consensus about such policies, especially among whites. In this work, I look at the racial attitudes towards affirmative action among white college students. I make use of new research methods for the empirical study of socially sensitive issues and ask whether these attitudes stem from prejudice, conflicts between social groups or individual political predispositions. Furthermore, I ask what is the relationship between political knowledge and such racial attitudes. I use the list experiment method because of its potential to offset the under-representation of opinions and attitudes. This approach allows respondents to be indirectly questioned, ensuring greater sincerity in their answers and, hence, providing more accurate portrayal of attitudes. This study shows that white respondents’ answers on affirmative action policies are strongly affected by social desirability. Only 6% of white respondents agreed that it is important to have a quota policy for blacks at the Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC). Individuals with greater political knowledge tend to express greater support for affirmative action and hold more coherent racial attitudes Results also reveal that negative racial attitudes and political predispositions are both determinants of the white student’s attitudes towards affirmative action policies.