The present text analyzes study abroad on the part of professors who teach in Master's and Doctoral programs in Brazil, using information provided through the national curriculum bank, or Plataforma Lattes, maintained by the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development ( Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)) , for the year of 2006. This data is analyzed within the context of a discussion on the effects of the internationalization of experts in State management and the uses of "Applied Social Sciences", since the use of such expertise is related to the strategies mobilized by agents in disputes over positions of power and around definitions of "the State", "politics" and "justice". This enables us to elaborate hypotheses on the relationship between the international circulation of Brazilian jurists and the import and export of institutional models, as well as their repercussions within national juridical and political space. The reconverting of agents previously devoted mainly to the 'operational world' toward an academic career and intellectual production, through investment in doctoral degrees and studies abroad, may be analyzed as the search to internationalize and provide new bases for knowledge related to the State and management of political and juridical institutions Similarly, in the case of jurists, this process includes the intellectual bases for resistance to institututional models that identify a weakening of the premises of the Nation-state.
study abroad; institutional mediation; juridical space; juridical elites; international circulation of elites
