Resumo em Inglês:

This paper focuses on the timing of coalition formation under presidential systems. While elections in parliamentary regimes have recently been characterized by a high degree of uncertainty both in the results and the formation of cabinets, this is not the case for presidential politics. As a result, we argue that coalition cycles differ across systems of government. As a matter of fact, we argue that the process of coalition formation under presidentialism is more complicated. To test our claim, we look at forty-four multiparty governments in Latin America and Asia. We find that presidentialism — with its fixed mandate and its specific institutional mechanism for selecting the president — directly affects the ‘coalition life cycle’ and fosters a stronger propensity to pre-electoral agreements.

Resumo em Inglês:

Evangelical black activism exists in Brazil since the 1970s. Its current public reemergence, however, is still under-explored in the social sciences. Moreover, part of the specialized literature has recently characterized this activism as incomplete – since its actors are considered to be ‘rejecting African inheritances’ – and advocates that black and evangelical identities are incompatible. Differing from this perspective, this article shows how evangelicals participate in the public problematization of racism; it proposes to address this issue with a non-essentialist approach in three arguments: 01. evangelical black activism has reemerged publicly; 02. actors configure their religious and racial identities according to the problematic situations and public arenas in which they engage, which requires scholars to adopt a situated and relational approach to this form of activism; 03. the ways in which they reemerge and configure their identities are conditioned by the politically liminal situation of evangelical black actors and, consequently, by their need to acquire the status of a legitimate social movement and legitimate evangelicals. This article presents partial results of a research effort conducted between 2019 and 2021, in which qualitative research methods and techniques were used, such as direct and participant observation (in São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, and Pernambuco), semi-directed interviews, document analysis, and social media monitoring.

Resumo em Inglês:

This article evaluates the effects of two educational policies implemented in the Brazilian state of Ceará. The first was a tax incentive (TI) for mayors to improve municipal education. Under this policy, municipal tax transfers were conditioned on educational achievement. The second was a program to offer educational technical assistance (TA) to municipalities. The impact of these policies was estimated by employing the synthetic control method to create a synthetic Ceará not affected by TI and TA. When the two policies were combined, the results were consistent with a 12 percent increase in Portuguese test scores in primary education and a 6.5 percent increase in lower secondary education. There were similar increases in mathematics test scores; however, these were not statistically significant. This study also investigates the impact of educational interventions on upper secondary schools, which, despite not being directly affected by the new policies, received better-prepared students from lower secondary schools. The findings show no effect on this level of education, highlighting the need for debate on how to extend the benefits of educational policies to upper secondary schools, as well as to other Brazilian states. This research is the first to analyze the impacts of the policies in Ceará on primary, lower secondary, and upper secondary schools using data from 1995 to 2019.

Resumo em Inglês:

Has war become obsolete? Some argue that macro-historical social processes are leading war into obsolescence, while for others that pattern is explained by the fact that war is a lingering potential outcome of international politics. I argue that both answers reveal a fundamental problem with the debate about the ‘end of war’. The focus on securing predictions about the end of war keeps analyses trapped in either a teleological or nomothetical linearity and overshadows the varied set of contingent mechanisms that allow for non-violent outcomes to prevail in contentious political episodes. The ‘War on War’ could benefit from analyses that asses shifting configurations of mechanisms in power politics.

Resumo em Inglês:

Despite its recent growth, the academic literature on credit displays theoretical controversies and empirical differences regarding the predominant effects of consumer credit policies. At the same time, such policies have been given central importance in the historical accounts of a government that adopted them on a large scale in Brazil: the Lula government. Drawing upon theoretical debates and descriptive content, this article aims to contribute to the existing literature by examining the trajectory of Brazilian credit policies from the perspective of its main proponents. In addition, to the analysis of relevant documents, this study is based on interviews with three groups responsible for defending the payroll deducted credit policy, the most important credit policy adopted in terms of adherence and stability in the country: 01. bureaucrats from the Ministry of Finance; 02. unionists and lawmakers linked to labor unions; and 03. financial entrepreneurs, especially those organized in Febraban. We demonstrate that, for each of these groups, the payroll deducted policy carried a specific goal and context, being framed within different arrangements of public policies. Furthermore, the involvement of each group shaped the design assumed by the policy, while the overlapping of different stakeholders optimized its chances of implementation in the legislative arena.

Resumo em Inglês:

The objective of this article is to evaluate how the most important political families in the nine states of the Brazilian Legal Amazon responded to two aspects of the 2022 elections: the advance of ‘bolsonarismo’ as a political force in the Amazon, and the environmental agenda. Based on the concept of political dynasties, the main family groupings (one per state) were selected. Our research question is: did the support of candidates backed by these families for Lula or Bolsonaro imply the reproduction of their respective environmental agendas? Two of the selected families have a well-defined ideological trajectory, while seven are marked by great ideological flexibility and are considered ‘swing families’. However, the majority of the families have agendas related to environmental degradation, and their trajectory converged towards candidates linked to anti-environmentalism. One family deviates from the analytical expectation, following a dynamic of economic interests and political calculation specific to the current situation. Evaluating the government programs of the state-level candidates launched or supported by these dynasties, we find that, in a national context marked by a well-defined ideological and programmatic dispute (in which the environmental agenda occupied a strategic place), support for Lula or Bolsonaro also led, in all cases, to the broad reproduction of their environmental agendas.