yuri kasahara

The goal of this article is to set the impeachment of Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff in the context of the broader literature on presidential breakdowns in Latin America. Going against the Linzian thesis of systemic instability, we argue that presidential systems in Latin America have found institutional mechanisms to deal with crisis between the Executive and Legislative branches. It does not mean, however, that the solutions for the deadlocks are uncontroversial. Issues of legitimacy and legality, as well as a highly polarized political environment, characterize the majority of cases of presidential breakdowns mobilized by the Legislative. Taking this broader context and the recent Brazilian case, we propose some institutional mechanisms in presidential systems that could facilitate solving political deadlocks between branches of government.

Amidst analyses of industrial policy’s renaissance in Latin America, Brazil is often hailed as the paragon of this movement. The mix of old and new institutions and instruments would constitute a unique effort in promoting industrial development in the post-neoliberal period. However, this experience has been followed by middling results of industrial performance. Reviewing an emerging literature about the institutionalization and results of the Brazilian industrial policy, we argue that important aspects of path-dependency have been ignored. Organizational and ideational resistance have led to a much more traditional and conservative industrial policy than would be expected. Grounded historical analysis about intragovernment conflicts, combined with studies about policy and sectoral developments, could give us elements to better assess the failures and achievements of the Brazilian case.

Integrated water resources management is advancing in Brazil as decentralized and participatory governance gains more prominence. However, local actions need to be better understood since several public policies are effectively implemented at this level. The present article aims to present the current debate about the local dimension in water resources governance. The paper analyzes empirical cases of water resources management in semi-arid Brazil, based on the performance of inter-municipal consortia and São Francisco’s River Basin Committee. Research shows that municipalities do not ignore the need to adopt new management models in response to their known financial and technical limitations. Cases of inter-municipal consortia and river basin committees have proven to be opportunities for greater visibility and action of local participants. Inter-municipal consortia assist in sanitation management, because they increase the access of municipalities to the services provided. On the ...

Este artículo presenta resultados de un estudio sobre las estrategias de los Grupos Empresariales Diversificados (GED) centroamericanos en frente a la globalización. Busca comprender cómo estos han cambiado en el proceso de integración económica en términos de su expansión al exterior, los sectores enfocados y su integración con las compañías transnacionales. Se plantea que, en general, los GED han cedido espacio para las grandes Compañías Transnacionales, a despecho de importantes excepciones y surgimiento de nuevos grupos. Sin embargo, mantienen su influenza por medio de sus redes de contactos nacionales e internacionales.

As argued in Chapter 1, in Central America the debate about what economic development model to pursue and what role big business and MNCs have in that tends to be polarized between those who argue for focusing on integration in a global economy and reducing barriers to investment, and those who argue for a more significant role for the state, and development from below. The former tend also to see the diversified business groups as paragons of development, while the latter tend to view them as parasites.

As we have seen so far, Central American DBGs have been relatively successful in adapting their business strategies to a more liberalized and globally integrated economy. However, to look only at market strategies is to neglect important non-market strategies that have been intensively employed as part of their process of adaptation to economic openness (Baron, 1995). Many owners of DBGs not only have been able to modernize the management and organizational structures of their companies, but also have relied on their close connections with governments in order to manage liberalization and benefit from the market-oriented reforms widely implemented in the region.1 Like their counterparts in South America (Rettberg, 2001; Schneider, 2010), DBGs in Central America have been able to obtain favorable terms on which to enter new sectors (e.g. privileged treatment in privatization processes) and to secure tax exemptions, public credit lines, and public contracts. In addition, DBGs have used market-oriented reforms as a strategy to maximize gains for their owners, as the opening of markets and the signing of free trade agreements were taken in consideration for plans of divestment through the sale of assets owned by DBGs to foreign buyers. In such a context, DBGs would rarely oppose liberalization and in fact would rather pressure for it (Sanchez-Ancochea, 2008).

Evangelical Christians have been a growing political force in Latin America. In Brazil, particularly, the election of the rightwing candidate Jair Bolsonaro as president in 2018 made the political relevance of evangelical Christians clearer than ever. The support of evangelicals was a key element for Bolsonaro’s victory. His political debt is reflected in a rhetoric that emphasizes the importance of evangelical Christian values and this rhetoric often blurs the separation between the state and religion. In this article, we analyze the political impact of evangelical Christians in Brazil and discuss to what extent the alliance between this group and president Bolsonaro represents a threat to Brazil’s secularist tradition.

O uso de referenciais normativos em estudos comparativos" Yuri Kasahara Introdução A utilização da comparação no campo da ciência política filia-se a uma tradição iniciada, para muitos, pelos estudos de Aristóteles sobre as constituições das diversas Cidades-Estado ...

ABSTRACT Business Groups and Transnational Capitalism in Central America investigates Central America's political economy through the lens of its powerful diversified business groups. It provides unique insight into their strategies when confronted with a globalized economy, their impact on development, and how they shape the political and economic institutions governing local varieties of capitalism. This study is based on the collection of data on sixty-nine of the largest groups from the six countries of the isthmus – Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Costa Rica, Nicaragua and Panama – and combines qualitative and quantitative methods. It seeks to analyze historical trajectories of individual groups and their evolution in distinct national contexts as well as their contributions to innovation and exports. The analysis shows that the business groups have formed alliances with multinational companies (MNCs), but are not in the process of being absorbed by them. Rather they shift sector focus and exploit their networks in order to face competition from MNCs.

The debate about industrial policy in Latin America has converged to a consensus about the prevalence of open-economy modalities in the region. After the liberalizing reforms of the 1990s, governments across the region would have replaced protectionist measures typical of the previous ISI model by measures that could improve the
competitiveness of existing companies. Consequently, credit and fiscal incentives for exports and technological upgrading of domestic firms had abounded as mechanisms to smooth the integration in the global economy. Despite the correctness of these stylized facts, they ignore the emergence of new modes of protectionism and industrial policies inspired on traditional import-substitution templates. Particularly in Brazil, local content requirements have been increasingly used as a policy to protect the national industry from foreign competition and, simultaneously, attract foreign investment. Through the analysis of the evolution of local content requirement in the Brazilian oil and gas industry, this article discusses how previous paradigms of development (and industrial policy) still subsist in Latin American countries, relativizing the conversion of the region to neo-liberalism. More specifically, we argue that a coalition of interests favorable to LCR was made possible because of particularities of the oil and gas industry in Brazil: such as the existence of a state-owned oil company (Petrobrás) as the dominant market player, and a regulatory framework that shielded it from the rules of international trade. Methodologically, the article adopts a process-tracing of the trajectory of LCR since its inception in the midst of the neoliberal government of Fernando Henrique Cardoso until the recent surge promoted by current president Dilma Rousseff, exploring how policy-makers, business sectors, and academics have adapted previous ISI policies to the context of a more liberalized economy.

The article seeks to explain how policies affect business groups’ decisions to stay or leave a sector of activity in a liberalized economy. The article utilizes a comparative historical approach to explain how business groups in six Central American countries decided to enter, remain in or leave the banking sector. Using case studies of the main banks belonging to business groups in the region, the article seeks to identify the impact of three policies: nationalization, privatization and liberalization. It argues that the sequence and idiosyncrasies of the policies each country adopted created divergent, path-dependent trajectories and different sets of incentives for business groups. As the analysis shows, government policies are not exclusive determinants of business strategies. However, they shape the environment in which business decisions are made. Therefore, understanding the divergent paths of different business groups in the region calls for studies that combine structural and micro-level analysis.

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The article discusses the autonomy of Brazil's Central Bank and its potential relationship to the national currency's stability. Beyond the government budget balance and the Central Bank's autonomy, we seek to demonstrate that the currency's stability also depends on the Bank's own political and institutional stability. Due to a gap in the literature, which has focused little attention on the political conditions and economic motivation by which important steps were taken towards achieving autonomy, we analyze the relations between autonomy and stability from a historical-institutional perspective. We call attention to the cyclical nature of the Brazilian economy, which alternates developmentalist policies and stabilization policies and thereby alters the Central Bank's role and degree of autonomy.