Renato Monseff Perissinotto

Caminhos para o parlamento: candidatos e eleitos nas eleições para deputado federal em 2006

This article is intended to identify the variables with the greatest impact on a candidates odds of being elected to the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies (the lower house) in the 2006 elections. Based on data from the Superior Electoral Court, the article begins by analyzing the existence of statistically significant correlations between gender, age, occupation, schooling, and campaign spending on the one hand and the election outcome on the other (elected versus not elected). Next, the article presents a bivariate logistic regression model to measure the real impact of each of these variables on the candidates outcome. These same procedures were repeated for the parties of the right, center, and left. The conclusion is that being a professional politician is the most important variable in determining a candidates electoral success in Brazil.

Recursos, decisão e poder: conselhos gestores de políticas públicas de Curitiba

This article investigates the political influence in institutions of enlarged participation. Having as empirical referential the social policies management councils in Curitiba, both theoretical and methodological issues are approached in relation to the concept of power/influence, seeking to identify the most appropriate analytical model for studying the political influence within such institutions. After having considered two of the main approaches (decisional and positional) commonly used in studying the practice of political power, we have concluded that each one alone proves to be unable to explain the distribution of political influence within the councils. The authors suggest the elaboration of a model capable of integrating the virtues of each one of the perspectives and, at the same time, incorporating variables of contextual nature.

State and Coffee Capital in São Paulo's Export Economy (Brazil 1889–1930)

Some recent works on the relationship between coffee interests and the State during the Brazilian ‘First Republic’ (1899–1930) have shown that the relationship between the national State and ‘coffee bourgeoisie’ was not quite as simple as earlier studies had made it seem. However, these analyses seem to assume that, at the regional level, the federalism of the First Republic placed regional political structures under class control. The goal of this article is to show that the ‘instrumentalist’ thesis is not even valid for the State apparatus when considered at the regional level. The article focuses on Sao Paulo state, seat of the most powerful interests linked to the coffee economy.

O 18 Brumário e a análise de classe contemporânea

This article considers The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon a kind of summary which condenses all the inherent difficulties to the class analysis of Politics. The article is divided in four parts. In the first part, it analyses some passages of The Eighteenth Brumaire that enunciate some fundamental propositions on class analysis of Politics; secondly, it asserts that contemporary Marxist literature on class has not solved the problems here pointed out; in the third and forth parts it discusses some class and non-class perspectives alternative to Marxism; at last, it essays some reflections on possible ways of elaborating with the class analysis of Politics and the problems to be overcome in those cases.

Economic mainstream and power: a profile analysis of Central Bank directors during PSDB and PT governments in Brazil

This paper analyses the professional and educational backgrounds of members of the Board of Directors of Central Bank of Brazil in the period between the beginning of the first Fernando Henrique’s term and the end of Dilma Rousseff’s first term. The paper puts forward two novelties. First, a database synthesizing the information from the curricula of the abovementioned individuals. Second, modern literature in the field of methodology of economics is used to categorize the educational backgrounds of those individuals with education in economics. Our general findings point to a differentiation between two types of members in the Board of Directors. The first type is the one generally recruited for the positions concerned with organizational issues within the Bank, and the second is usually the one that occupies posts directly related to the decision making of economic policies. However, we did not identify significant differences between the types of individuals chosen by PSDB and PT governments.

Elites estatais e industrialização: ensaio de comparação entre Brasil, Argentina e México (1920-1970)

The purpose of this article is to stress on the importance of the sociology of state elites to fully understand developmental processes. With that purpose in mind, we comparatively analyze the industrialization process in Argentina, Brazil and Mexico from 1920 to 1970. Our analysis shows that although Argentina was in a much better condition to initiate its industrialization process in the early thirties, it was overtaken by Brazil and Mexico already in the late fifties. The article suggests that this took place because Brazil and Mexico, among other things, had a state elite willing to take development seriously, whereas Argentina lacked it.

Reclutamiento político en Brasil. Mujeres, negros y partidos en las elecciones federales de 2014

This article aims to present a systematic approach to the influence of professional occupations on parliamentary political recruitment. Norris and Lovenduski’s (1997) hypothesis is put to the test, according to which given occupations are more prone to produce political success than others, analyzing 5 219 cases of candidates who participated for a position in Brazil’s parliament during the 2014 elections. We classified stated occupations into categories, considering their greater or lesser predisposition towards politics, and we evaluated the influence of social variable on electoral results. We added other attributes like sex, skin color and size of party represented by each candidate to the type of occupation. The findings reveal a strong association between the occupations with a high disposition for politics and electoral success, including the case of women and the small parties’ candidates, with the exception of black candidates.

O conceito de estado desenvolvimentista e sua utilidade para os casos brasileiro e argentino

O texto analisa o conceito de Estado Desenvolvimentista e sua utilidade para pensar comparativamente os casos de Brasil e Argentina. O metodo da pesquisa e comparativo e o material utilizado e a extensa bibliografia sobre o conceito e sobre os dois paises, alem de algumas fontes empiricas, notadamente entrevistas com decisores da area economica. A pesquisa indica ate o presente momento a importância das elites politicas e burocraticas para explicar as diferencas de desempenho no processo de industrializacao de Brasil e Argentina. O desenho comparativo da pesquisa, amparada num conceito que, ele proprio, nasceu de pesquisas comparativas, contribui para melhor delimitar as causas nao economicas do desenvolvimento.

Comparação, história e interpretação: por uma ciência política histórico-interpretativa

This article intends to answer three questions. Firstly, how can we define comparison? Secondly, how can we handle it? Thirdly, is the search for causal relationships the ultimate purpose of researches in political science or should we complement it with an interpretive procedure? In the first part the article presents what we shall understand for comparison; in the following part, [the article] it points out the theoretical advantages of comparative analysis of few cases based on a historical perspective; in the third section, it makes the case for the complementarity between a causal analysis and a comprehensive perspective.

A virada ideacional: quando e como ideias importam

O ensaio bibliografico analisa a literatura que ficou conhecida como virada ideacional. Seu objetivo e, primeiro, resumir as criticas dessa literatura as perspectivas institucionalistas com as quais ela dialoga; segundo, sistematizar suas vantagens teoricas e, por fim, identificar o ferramental metodologico utilizado pelos autores que se filiam a ela. O ensaio baseia-se na analise de uma ampla gama de livros e artigos publicados sobre o assunto nos ultimos 20 anos. Por meio dessa revisao bibliografica, fomos capazes de mostrar como a literatura da virada ideacional permite incluir as ideias nas explicacoes dos fenomenos politicos. A inclusao das ideias, por sua vez, exige uma postura metodologica pluralista que pode significar avancos importantes para a ciencia politica.