Resumo em Inglês:

This article presents results of ongoing research into personal networks in São Paulo, exploring their relationships with poverty and urban segregation. We present the results of networks of 89 poor individuals who live in three different segregation situations in the city. The article starts by describing and analysing the main characteristics of personal networks of sociability, highlighting aspects such as their size, cohesion and diversity, among others. Further, we investigate the main determinants of these networks, especially their relationship with urban segregation, understood as separation between social groups in the city, and specific forms of sociability. Contrary to much of the literature, which takes into account only segregation of individual attributes in the urban space (race, ethnicity, socioeconomic level etc), this investigation tests the importance both of networks and of segregation in the reproduction of poverty situations.

Resumo em Inglês:

The aim of this paper is to analyse the relationship between institutional economics of cooperation and the political economy of trust. Transactions costs, principal-agent theory, market power, increasing-returns theory and value creation, strategic management: competitive forces, resource-based theory, organisational knowledge and learning, strategic choice theory and collective efficiency theory are reviewed. Lastly, the political economy of trust is sustained.

Resumo em Inglês:

Brazilian politics has been usually analyzed as a case full of pathologies by scholars and political journalists alike. Fragmentation, volatility, clientelism and inefficiency have become bywords for describing the performance of Brazil's political institutions. As a counter to this view, this work argues that the country's democracy in the post-1988 period presents enough evidence in favor of classical hypotheses about electoral politics in the contemporary world, theories that invariably are based on premises of rationality in the behavior of voters and political parties. These theories include the median voter theorem, Duverger's law on the mechanical and psychological effects of electoral systems, and the model of retrospective voting. The article also contends that the passing of time has contributed to make Brazilian politics more rational and efficient in the mould of older democracies.

Resumo em Inglês:

In analyses of female representation in lower houses, the adoption of quotas, the electoral system and the religious aspect have been identified as the main explanatory variables. In the case of upper houses,1 I see a relationship between their political strength and women's presence in them: when they are weak, the presence of female representatives tends to be larger; when they are strong, women's presence is smaller. Furthermore, the article shows that an analysis based solely on the number of seats held by women is insufficient for one to gather the true dimension of their participation in politics. Evaluating the role and expressiveness of the institutions in which they are present is also necessary.

Resumo em Inglês:

The article aims, in the first instance, to make a detailed analysis of the work of Hedley Bull, approaching the main themes and concepts developed by him. Secondly, it aims to re-evaluate the potential of the author's contribution, given the new conditions of the post-Cold War period. With this in mind, the article critically analyses the most recent interpretations of his work, which seek to highlight its critical and normative potential, as well as to dissociate it from the realist tradition in international relations. These two facts differentiate the new commentators from older ones and reaffirm the continuing relevance of Hedley Bull's work, the latter being the article's chief conclusion.

Resumo em Inglês:

The recent creation of United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG), an organization of local authorities of universal scope, is the culmination of the emerging process of a new political actor on the international scene. The article describes and analyses some aspects of the interaction between this global political actor-in-the-making and the United Nations (UN) system. The theoretical question it addresses is how the new global actor has — even if partially — achieved its objectives, given its limited power resources and the opposition of other (apparently) more powerful actors: the central governments that run the UN system. Drawing on the literature on the foreign activities of subnational governments, as well as on the literature on transnational actors and the creation of global norms, the proposed explanation highlights the “mixed actor” (partially sovereignty-bound, partially sovereignty-free) character of subnational governments acting internationally.