Political Science

This research project analyzes the challenges of negotiating an international treaty on arms trade based on a recent literature that focus on the design of international regimes, the efficacy of these regimes and the decision-making mechanisms to approve international instruments. Concerning the design of international regimes, the work of Koremenos, Lipson and Snidal (2001) constitutes a supporting theoretical platform. Regarding the efficacy of the international regimes, I assume that during negotiations countries will attempt to incorporate institutional mechanisms that increase the likelihood of legal obligations compliance. In this sense, Gilligan (2004, 2006) and Downs and Jones (2002) offer a key contribution to understand the reasons and interests that lead countries to abide (or not) by the committed legal obligations within the international sphere. As to the decision-making process, this research project verifies to what extent the mechanisms of approval of treaties and committee elections proposed by Brams, Kilgour, e Sanver (2004, 2007) could contribute to the main object of this study: an international treaty on arms trade. In a first stage, hypotheses related to the positions taken by countries regarding the feasibility, scope and standards of an international treaty for arms trade are tested based on data made available by the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research.

From Cristiane de Andrade Lucena Carneiro.

Considering that electoral politics substantially influence the supply of public policies, this project investigates voting behavior in a metropolitan region. Previous results of investigations undertaken by the Center for Metropolitan Studies showed that voting behavior is highly predictable and related to socio-economic factors. These results, however, were based only on data for the city of São Paulo. This study is one of a kind in the Brazilian literature in terms of methods and data used. Instead of information from surveys, we work with the lowest possible unit of aggregation for election results, namely, the ballot box. Previous findings refer only to São Paulo, the most developed state in the country, where the two major national political parties in the country have deep roots. Thus, one of the objectives is to test if similar results are found in other states. For this reason, the project is expanding the spatial coverage of the investigation by including as many new states as possible. The project continues to employ Gary King’s methodology to identify the electoral base of parties and candidates, which combines electoral data with socio-economic variables. Efforts in this direction have already been made with respect to the pattern of vote distribution in the Metropolitan Region of Rio de Janeiro and comparing the results with the ones obtained for the city of São Paulo. Data organization regarding the study of intra-urban electoral behavior has been already completed. Besides differences in the level of wealth, the political history of the Metropolitan Region of Rio de Janeiro and its role in national politics are also a contrast to São Paulo. A further objective of the research is to understand the mechanisms that explain the observed voting patterns by applying an empirical test of theoretically oriented hypotheses.

Researchers involved

According to the literature, the main feature of the relationship between the executive and the legislative branches in the Brazilian First Republic is equilibrium. In contrast to the first Republican decade, with the disruption of the existing institutional apparatus which would have led to a chaotic environment, it is believed that the years that followed the government of President Campos Sales were marked by political and institutional normalization and the beginning of what would become the longest lasting formula in national history, articulated in the Governors’ Pact. The hypothesis of this research is that the apparent stability of the regime does not correspond to a harmony of interests between these power spheres. In other words, a conflict between them did exist and this research seeks precisely to shed light on these facts by studying bills vetoed during the Constitutional Reform of 1926 and the subsequent period.

From Fernanda Machado and Giancarlo Casellato Gozzi.

Mini CV:

Novaes obtained his degree in Economics from FEA-USP in 2004, and earned his masters degree from FGV-EESP in 2007. He is currently a PhD candidate in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley. His areas of interest are: quantitative methods and comparative politics, focusing especially Latin America. He currently studies party organization and adaptation.

Mini CV:

Machado is currently an undergraduate student in Social Sciences from the University of São Paulo and a research assistant at the Brazilian Center for Analysis and Planning (CEBRAP).
 

Lattes Curriculum
Researches

Mini CV:

Machado is an undergraduate student in Social Sciences of the Faculty of Philosophy, Languages and Human Sciences, University of São Paulo, and an undergraduate research fellow at NECI (Center for Comparative and International Studies), collaborating in the project "Political Institutions, Patterns of Executive-Legislative Relations and Government Capacity" and a member of the study group “budgeting dynamics”. She is a fluent speaker of Portuguese and intermediate of English.

Lattes Curriculum

Mini CV:

Professor in the Department of Political Science, USP. He obtained his degree in Political Science from the Università degli Studi di Bologna in 1997, a Masters degree in Political Science from the University of São Paulo in 2001 and a doctoral degree in Political Science from the University of São Paulo in 2006. His field of interest is Political Science especially Comparative Political Science, in the following themes: legislative process, electoral systems and the history of political institutions.
 

Lattes Curriculum
Researches
Publications

Mini CV:

Arretche is a professor “livre-docente” in the department of Political Science, University of São Paulo, Director of the Center for Metropolitan Studies and editor of the Brazilian Political Science Review. She obtained a degree in Social Sciences from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, a masters degree in Political Science from the State University of Campinas, a doctoral degree Social Sciences from the State University of Campinas and was a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Political Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (USA). She was a visiting fellow in the Department of Political and Social Sciences at the European University Institute in Florence. She is also a CNPq Productivity Researcher. Her field of interest is Comparative and Institutional Analysis. Her main areas of research include comparative analysis of federal States and comparative analysis of social protection systems. 

Lattes Curriculum
Researches
Publications

Mini CV:

Barberia is a Doctor Professor in the Department of Political Science, University of São Paulo, principal researcher of the Research Center for Comparative and International Studies (NECI), principal researcher of the Center for Studies in Public Policy and Public Sector Economics (CEPESP) of the Getulio Vargas Foundation in São Paulo, and a research associate of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard University. She received her doctoral degree from Getúlio Vargas Foundation-EAESP in Government and Public Administration, a Master degree in Public Policy from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and a degree in Economics and Spanish from the University of California, Berkeley. She worked in Ecuador and Panama as a Junior Economist and in research projects dealing with economies in transition at the Harvard Institute for International Development. From 2001 to April 2011, she was Program Associate at the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies (DRCLAS) from Harvard University.
 

Lattes Curriculum
Researches
Publications

Mini CV:

Professor da Silva received his degree in Economics from University of São Paulo in 1999, a masters degree in Economics from the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo in 2002 and a doctoral degree in Government and Public Administration from Getulio Vargas Foundation-SP, in 2009, with a doctoral visit at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He is currently the coordinator of the undergraduate courses in Economics and International Relations at the Álvares Penteado School of Commerce Foundation. His field of interest is Economics, especially Political Economy, in the following themes: participatory budgeting, electoral rules and legislative behavior.
 

Lattes Curriculum
Researches
Publications