Brazilian Politics Research Articles

Challenges in implementing COP 21 obligations in Brazil until 2022

The article examines the challenges Brazil faced in implementing its obligations under the Paris Agreement (COP 21) up to 2022, focusing on the agricultural, energy, and transportation sectors, while also addressing the political obstacles that complicated the process. The study highlights the need for an integrated and coordinated approach, emphasizing the importance of public policies aimed at promoting clean energy, sustainable transportation, and more environmentally friendly agricultural practices. The Brazilian case reveals specific difficulties, including deforestation in the Amazon, the scarcity of financial resources, and economic pressures that often prioritize economic growth over environmental concerns. The article also explores the complexities of Brazil's political and economic context, discussing the challenges of balancing economic development with environmental sustainability. Despite the ambitious goals set by the Paris Agreement, the lack of coercive mechanisms and internal political divergences represent significant barriers to the effective implementation of environmental measures in the country, requiring greater commitment and coordination between public and private sectors.

Elections, coalitions, and the politics of Brazil's macroeconomic stabilization

Elections, coalitions, and the politics of Brazil's macroeconomic stabilization

Epistemologies from the North of Brazil: the counterhegemony of Epistemologies from the Southeast

The North and the global South are separated not only by the Equator, but also by an abyssal thinking, as emphasized by the author Portuguese Boaventura de Sousa Santos, which presents the Modern Western Thought as responsible for making invisible, non existent, the knowledge produced and practiced by humans in the global South, while the North is global hegemonic in its being, being and doing in the world. However, the South epistemologies exist and can help you understand how to practice co-presence, until now denied by abyssal thinking that makes the hegemonic global North. So, open up possibilities for exploring parallel understanding epistemologies North of Brazil, located in the global South, since the existence of abyssal thinking global instigates us to also discuss the hypothesis of a thought abysmal environmental Brazil, definer a line; 'this side of the line' is the Southeast and 'across the line' is the North of Brazil, in which context the North represents all other regions, except the Southeast. Epistemologies of southeastern Brazil are assumed hegemonic, but need to be deconstructed to the revelations engendered research on the epistemologies of the North Country, thereby reconstruct a Brazilian thought, where North, South, Southeast, Northeast and Midwest recognize physical geography and politics of Brazil, without forgetting that the human being in any geographical locations and under different political contexts are diverse, complex, and this has to be knowledge and expertise, and must take up counter-hegemonic, while there is no hegemony . The beginning of the reconstruction process is understanding how the sociology of absences makes this all that was made invisible by the logic and methods of production of non existence and presents the ecology of knowledge as an antidote to the production of absences, because that will represent the ecology superstructure built this new thinking replacement of abyssal thinking of Southeastern Brazil hegemonic. The purpose of this article, therefore, is to explore the possibilities of epistemologies of Northern Brazil for the construction of Brazilian thought.

Radiating Truthiness: Authenticity Performances in Politics in Brazil and the United States

Political authenticity is connected to higher levels of political trust from electorates and can influence political outcomes, but it is often overlooked as a relevant factor for electoral behavior. To date, discussions of how authenticity appears and changes in politics typically remain at the theoretical level and are rarely comparative. This article develops a framework to identify and compare how authenticity is performed in political discourses over time and across settings by politicians. To demonstrate the usefulness of the framework, this article investigates authenticity performances in 21,496 political texts of electoral debates, interviews, campaigns, and official speeches by presidents and presidential candidates in Brazil and the United States since 1988. The findings indicate that authenticity is generally performed with greater frequency by presidents and presidential candidates in Brazil than in the United States, though authenticity performances are not more prevalent during election years in either country.

Captain Mayor and Sergeant Councilman? An Assessment of the Reach of Military Politicization in Brazilian Politics

Captain Mayor and Sergeant Councilman? An Assessment of the Reach of Military Politicization in Brazilian Politics

Quem decide no STF e o protagonismo do Supremo

This article reflects on the judiciary's protagonism, specifically about the limits necessary to contain an activist behavior of the Brazilian judiciary. After the promulgation of the 1988 Constitution, it is denoted that the posture of acting only upon provocation is no longer observed in the behavior of the Brazilian judiciary. This article deals with the subject from the analytical-deductive method with theoretical reflection on the literature pertinent to the Constitutional State and the judicialization of politics in Brazil. It is concluded here that the protagonism of the judiciary and its characteristic correlated phenomena, as is the case of the judicialization of politics, is placed as an expected corollary in a context of consolidation of the Democratic State of Law and is also favored by some peculiarities of the Brazilian political system. It is suggested that one of the means to contain the exacerbated exposure of the Brazilian judiciary is to favor collegiate decisions in the STF over monocratic ones, ensuring the ratio decidendi and legal certainty.

The ideological decline of Brazilian economic thought in the context of the business-military dictatorship and the crisis in the diffusion of Marxist criticism

This article aims to describe the process of ideologization of brazilian economic thought initiated by the offensive of the business-military dictatorship and which has materialized today both in stricto sensu neoliberalism and in its variants, such as the case of the so-called neodevelopmentalism, as well as pointing out the challenges of marxism to consolidate itself as the positive overcoming of the Brazilian Political Economy.

Evolution of Brazilian Democracy: Unveiling Election Dynamics in Political Issues, Negativity, and Acclaim

In recent years, Brazil, as the world’s fourth-largest democracy, witnessed the dominance of polarized and symbolically charged electoral campaigns on social media, culminating in the election of a populist political figure in 2018 and his subsequent defeat in 2022. Extensive research has indicated that political campaigns often sidelined substantive policy proposals in favor of negative and divisive issues. However, a critical gap remains in the absence of temporal investigations contrasting the prevalence of negativity and acclaim campaigns on social media platforms during elections. This study addresses this gap by examining associations between political issues and negative and acclaim campaigns across two Brazilian electoral campaigns. Drawing upon a sample of messages posted on Twitter (n = 1,191) during the presidential elections of 2018 and 2022, our study reveals associations between substantive political issues, such as education and health, and acclaim campaign strategies, while the divisive issues of Covid-19 and corruption are associated with negative campaign strategies. Moreover, the results suggest that gender policy is related to both acclaim and negative messages since it is a polarizing issue in Brazilian politics. Our study also shows an increased negativity trend, with the 2022 presidential election campaign more likely to be negative than in 2018. By conducting a temporal analysis of Brazil’s political context, our study sheds light on the evolving dynamics of political communication in the age of social media, contributing substantially to the literature on negativity in political campaigns.

Italian at Public Schools: Historical Conflicts in the State of Santa Catarina

This paper focuses on the teaching of Italian language in public schools in some cities of the state of Santa Catarina in Brazil by framing it into the context of Brazilian linguistic diversity. In the last decades, cities founded by Italian immigrants that arrived in Brazil during the XIX century promulgated laws that assured the inclusion of the Italian language in the curriculum of their public school system, even though the majority of the immigrants spoke Italian dialects. The article, then, besides dealing with the linguistic repertoire of the immigrants, shall also try to analyze the linguistic oppression that those immigrants were subjected to during the Estado Novo period of Brazilian politics, seeking to access the consequences of that oppression for the new generations. The chief aim of the paper is, therefore, to problematize the relationship between linguistic oppression and prejudices still in place regarding the use of Italian dialects, trying to put into question the validity of the teaching of standardized Italian in communities formed mainly by dialectophones.

Heterogeneous rights

This paper explores the complex landscape of sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) politics in Brazil, and the country’s promotion of these human rights norms internationally. Despite Brazil’s image as a trailblazer in LGBTQ+ rights and inclusion, activists are challenged domestically by legislative hurdles and conservative movements. Brazil’s challenging domestic situation stands in stark contrast with the country’s role as a prominent advocate for SOGI norms internationally. This paper unpacks these contradictions and compares Brazil’s trajectory with those of Argentina and South Africa. A closer look at SOGI human rights norms in the Brazilian context reveals diverse pathways to human rights norm promotion. Despite setbacks, Brazil’s experience offers insights into the resilience of human rights advocacy and the potential for transformative change, advocating for a nuanced understanding of SOGI politics amidst diverse actors and contexts.

Brazilian politics on trial: corruption and reform under democracy

Brazilian politics on trial: corruption and reform under democracy

Censorship

In his book Contra Toda Censura (Against All Censorship, in a literal translation, no official English translation available), the diplomat Gustavo Maulstach warns us that we are living in times of reversal of this trend with "an increasing number of people abandoning the fundamental principle of freedom of expression in favor of a belief in tutored public debate." With astonishment, I predict the debate on freedom of expression to be the most important of this decade in Brazilian politics. Unfortunately, the classical liberal position of protecting liberty against tyranny does not seem to be the most widely agreed upon at the moment. Concerned about this situation, Maultasch seeks to defend complete freedom of expression on solid grounds, re-examining established arguments and exposing new ones. For this reason, Contra Toda a Censura is a necessary book for the Brazilian public debate, which arrives at a good time.

Securing financial returns in politically uncertain worlds: Finance and urban water politics in Brazil

Studies of financialization have highlighted how politics, particularly through the state, drives the increasing entanglement of financial actors and rationales in the production of urban space. This article shifts the angle to consider the challenges that uncertain politics pose for such entanglement. Looking beyond techno-calculative practices, it explores how finance works politically to sustain value extraction within fragmented regulatory landscapes. It does so through historical and ethnographic analysis of financial investment in urban water and sanitation provision in Brazil, drawing on fieldwork, interviews, and a new dataset on public-private contracts to interrogate how private water companies navigate politico-regulatory relations under financial investors like private equity. It shows that while these providers were quite engaged in local politics under their original owners (construction groups), under financial investors they sought to “escape” it by curbing ties to public officials, reducing the autonomy of local subsidiaries, and successfully lobbying for national standards on regulatory norms. It argues these centralizing efforts constituted forms of centripetal politics meant to enhance asset monitoring, increase regulatory legibility, and reduce political uncertainty. The findings illuminate how financial investors work across political scales to navigate political risk and sustain financial value, thus problematizing the conventional analytical focus on how finance capitalizes on local forms of entrepreneurial politics. Crucially, they reveal the need to treat institutional environments not simply as filters for financial investment but as objects of political contestation by financial actors. This allows for blurring the boundaries between finance and politics, and for politicizing finance.

Brazil as a Laboratory for Fascist Uprising

Abstract How can Brazil be understood as a global laboratory for fascist insurrection? Given the events of January 8, 2023, this essay intends to analyze, on the one hand, the manifestation of a global extreme right that tends to operate as a large-scale, long-lasting anti-institutional offensive force. On the other hand, there is also a global dynamic limited to liberal democracies of institutional reform that cowers in the face of radical demands, such as the end of national policing above all. Finally, the constant colonization of Brazilian politics by society's militarized operations urges us to reclaim the foundations of politics as potential for (im)possible futures through uprisings against our unbearable condition, in turn transforming the unsustainability of life into a collective venture for transformation.

Movements and Countermovements in Contemporary Brazil: Repression, Confrontation, and the Fight for Land

Abstract How can we make sense of the current rise and strength of the far right in Brazil? This article aims to address this question by providing an analysis of Brazilian politics in recent years, exploring both its institutional aspects and factors exceeding this framework. It examines the past decade of protests beginning with those in June 2013, and the strained relationship between the leftist government and the communities involved in these demonstrations. Furthermore, the article seeks to understand the resurgence of the far right within its historical context as a reactionary movement. It highlights how the events of 2013 foreshadowed unresolved issues pertaining to justice and consequently, approaches to political struggle in Brazil.

Women in politics in Brazil: inclusion and political capital of female federal deputies

Women in politics in Brazil: inclusion and political capital of female federal deputies

Separate Tables: Thematic and Methodological Divisions in Brazilian Political Science,,

Separate Tables: Thematic and Methodological Divisions in Brazilian Political Science,,

O espaço da politização na estrutura do Governo Federal brasileiro, 1999-2021

Abstract What was the extent of the Brazilian president’s politicization space within the structure of the federal public bureaucracy from 1999 to 2021? The extent of this space is related to the importance of politicization as a strategy for controlling the bureaucracy, monitoring partners, and political accommodation, following the logic of coalition presidentialism. Thus, this article sought to measure it using a descriptive methodology based on data collected from the Federal Government’s Painel Estatístico de Pessoal, encompassing positions and functions within the government throughout the period. By considering all possibilities of appointments and designations made by the president for high-level positions, this article presented an innovative approach compared to previous Brazilian Political Science studies assessing politicization in the federal government. This approach led to the conclusion that the extent of the politicization space did not substantially decrease despite the reduction in senior management and advisory positions (known in Brazil as Cargos de Direção e Assessoramento Superior - DAS), in addition to revealing a new pattern of politicization characterized by increased use of funções de confiança exclusively held by career public servants and the valorization of these servants even in DAS positions.

The New-Right and the political influence on religion: Notes about religious activism in Brazilian politics

A direita religiosa brasileira ganhou espaço no cenário político dos últimos anos, especialmente no segundo mandato da ex-presidente Dilma Rousseff. Suas ideias e modos de ação na política demonstraram semelhanças no modo de agir com a New-Right norte-americana, que surgiu em meados dos anos 1970. Esses traços em comum são encontrados, no campo social, na manifestação de líderes religiosos em suas residências de atuação e, na esfera política, na atuação de parlamentares que compõem a Frente Parlamentar Evangélica (FPE), em propostas como o projeto Escola Sem Partido e na promoção de intolerância às pautas de minorias. Este ensaio, com isso, tem como finalidade apresentar ideias e argumentos encontrados nestas direitas, em ambos os contextos, na percepção de uma retroalimentação ideológica entre Brasil e EUA na promoção de um ativismo religioso na política, e na leitura em que esse ativismo se coloca no cenário social como uma Religião Pública.

O Estado brasileiro e as relações étnico-raciais no pensamento de Oliveira Vianna

The article investigates the thoughts of Francisco José de Oliveira Vianna (1883-1951) concerning the ethno-racial relations shaped by the Brazilian state. The study employs a historical analysis of scientific discourses within the field of law, grounded in the methodological foundations of the archaeology of knowledge and power. Vianna constructed a eugenic narrative, disseminated under the title "Evolução do povo brasileiro no Censo de 1920" (Evolution of the Brazilian People in the 1920 Census), reflecting an integrationist indigenous policy and a racist approach that steered the nation toward whitening. Examining Oliveira Vianna's theory remains crucial not only for critically revisiting the foundations of Brazilian political, legal, and social thought in its conservative and authoritarian aspects but also for understanding the normative concept of people or nation as something less naturalized.