Ambition, Federalism, and Legislative Politics in Brazil PDF Download

Author: David Samuels
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139440179
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 266

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Book Description
Ambition theory suggests that scholars can understand a good deal about politics by exploring politicians' career goals. In the USA, an enormous literature explains congressional politics by assuming that politicians primarily desire to win re-election. In contrast, although Brazil's institutions appear to encourage incumbency, politicians do not seek to build a career within the legislature. Instead, political ambition focuses on the subnational level. Even while serving in the legislature, Brazilian legislators act strategically to further their future extra-legislative careers by serving as 'ambassadors' of subnational governments. Brazil's federal institutions also affect politicians' electoral prospects and career goals, heightening the importance of subnational interests in the lower chamber of the national legislature. Together, ambition and federalism help explain important dynamics of executive-legislative relations in Brazil. This book's rational-choice institutionalist perspective contributes to the literature on the importance of federalism and subnational politics to understanding national-level politics around the world.

Author: M. Melo
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137310847
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 341

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Book Description
This book offers the first conceptually rigorous analysis of the political and institutional underpinnings of Brazil's recent rise. Using Brazil as a case study in multiparty presidentialism, the authors argue that Brazil's success stems from the combination of a constitutionally strong president and a robust system of checks and balances.

Author: Barry Ames
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 0472021435
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 346

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Book Description
Many countries have experimented with different electoral rules in order either to increase involvement in the political system or make it easier to form stable governments. Barry Ames explores this important topic in one of the world's most populous and important democracies, Brazil. This book locates one of the sources of Brazil's "crisis of governance" in the nation's unique electoral system, a system that produces a multiplicity of weak parties and individualistic, pork-oriented politicians with little accountability to citizens. It explains the government's difficulties in adopting innovative policies by examining electoral rules, cabinet formation, executive-legislative conflict, party discipline and legislative negotiation. The book combines extensive use of new sources of data, ranging from historical and demographic analysis in focused comparisons of individual states to unique sources of data for the exploration of legislative politics. The discussion of party discipline in the Chamber of Deputies is the first multivariate model of party cooperation or defection in Latin America that includes measures of such important phenomena as constituency effects, pork-barrel receipts, ideology, electoral insecurity, and intention to seek reelection. With a unique data set and a sophisticated application of rational choice theory, Barry Ames demonstrates the effect of different electoral rules for election to Brazil's legislature. The readership of this book includes anyone wanting to understand the crisis of democratic politics in Brazil. The book will be especially useful to scholars and students in the areas of comparative politics, Latin American politics, electoral analysis, and legislative studies. Barry Ames is the Andrew Mellon Professor of Comparative Politics and Chair, Department of Political Science, University of Pittsburgh.

Author: Cristiane Brum Bernardes
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351370545
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 155

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Book Description
This book develops a critical analysis of the Brazilian legislature, specifically the role of its lower chamber, the Chamber of Deputies, in policy making and how this combines with its public engagement role, namely in terms of promoting participation and transparency. The book draws from Nelson Polsby’s theoretical conceptualization about transformative and arena legislatures. The purpose is not to reach a consensus about the exact categorisation of the legislature in Polsby’s classification. On the contrary, the chapters are mainly concerned in challenging this classification through interdisciplinary perspectives drawn from within the legislative studies in Brazil. The book’s first chapters introduce the reader to an historical overview of the Brazilian legislature’s policy making and organization, identifying its role in proposing public policies and scrutinising proposals from the Executive Branch. The subsequent chapters focus on its public engagement role and address contemporary elements – such as political participation and transparency – and how these interlink, or not, with legislative practices and influence the production of law. The book provides a unique insight into the operation and power of the legislature of a key global power, Brazil, in a presidential political system context. The chapters originally published as a special issue in the Journal of Legislative Studies.

Author: W. Heller
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230622550
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 316

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Book Description
Political parties and democratic politics go hand in hand. Since parties matter, it matters too when elected politicians change party affiliation. This book shows why, when, and to what effect politicians switch parties in pursuit of their goals, as constrained by institutions and in response to their environments.

Author: Scott Mainwaring
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107175526
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 525

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Book Description
This book generates a wealth of new empirical information about Latin American party systems and contributes richly to major theoretical debates about party systems and democracy.

Author: Scott Morgenstern
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521796590
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 532

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Book Description
This theoretically inspired study explores legislative politics in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Mexico. Instead of beginning with an assumption that these legislatures are either rubber-stamps or obstructionist bodies, the chapters provide new data and a fresh analytical approach to describe and explain the role of these representative bodies in these consolidating democracies. For each country the book provides three chapters dedicated, in turn, to executive-legislative relations, the legislatures' organizational structure, and the policy process.

Author: Peter R. Kingstone
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Pre
ISBN: 0822973472
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 359

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Book Description
Brazil presents a compelling example of twenty-first century democracy in action. In this sequel to their landmark study Democratic Brazil, editors Peter Kingstone and Timothy J. Power have assembled a distinguished group of U.S.- and Brazilian-based scholars to assess the impact of competitive politics on Brazilian government, institutions, economics, and society. The 2002 election of Lula da Silva and his Worker's Party promised a radical shift toward progressive reform, transparency, and accountability, opposing the earlier centrist and market-oriented policies of the Cardoso government. But despite the popular support reflected in his 2006 reelection, many observers claim that Lula and his party have fallen short of their platform promises. They have moved to the center in their policies, done little to change the elitist political culture of the past, and have engaged in "politics as usual" in executive-legislative relations, leading to allegations of corruption. Under these conditions, democracy in Brazil remains an enigma. Progress in some areas is offset by stagnation and regression in others: while the country has seen renewed economic growth and significant progress in areas of health care and education, the gap between rich and poor remains vast. Rampant crime, racial inequality, and a pandemic lack of personal security taint the vision of progress. These dilemmas make Brazil a particularly striking case for those interested in Latin America and democratization in general.

Author: Kristin N. Wylie
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9781108453530
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Brazil's quality of democracy remains limited by enduring obstacles including the weakness of parties and underrepresentation of marginalized groups. Party Institutionalization and Women's Representation in Democratic Brazil theorizes the connections across those problems, explaining how weakly institutionalized and male-dominant parties interact to undermine descriptive representation in Brazil. This book draws on an original multilevel database of 27,653 legislative candidacies spanning six election cycles, over 100 interviews, and field observations from throughout Brazil. Wylie demonstrates that more inclusive participation in candidate-centered elections amidst raced-gendered structural inequities relies on institutionalized parties with the capacity to support women, and the will, heralded by party leadership, to do so. The book illustrates how women leaders in Brazil's more institutionalized parties enable white and Afro-descendant female aspirants to navigate the masculinized terrain of formal politics. It enhances our understanding of how parties mediate electoral rules, as well as institutional and party change in the context of weak but robustly gendered institutions.

Author: Ray Fisman
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190463996
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
Corruption regularly makes front page headlines: public officials embezzling government monies, selling public offices, and trading bribes for favors to private companies generate public indignation and calls for reform. In Corruption: What Everyone Needs to Know®, renowned scholars Ray Fisman and Miriam A. Golden provide a deeper understanding of why corruption is so damaging politically, socially, and economically. Among the key questions examined are: is corruption the result of perverse economic incentives? Does it stem from differences in culture and tolerance for illicit acts of government officials? Why don't voters throw corrupt politicians out of office? Vivid examples from a wide range of countries and situations shed light on the causes of corruption, and how it can be combated.