Bicameral Politics: The Dynamics of Lawmaking in Brazil

What accounts for legislative capacity? Legislative capacity is the efficiency and effectiveness of the executive and legislative branches in lawmaking. Much literature in political science has addressed this important question. I join the discussion by examining the impact of bicameralism on legislative capacity and outcomes. I argue that bicameralism affects legislative capacity but its effects are conditioned by the location of preferences, inter-chamber bargaining, and legislative rules. Using Brazil as a case, I uncover the ways in which the inter-chamber interplays and their interaction with the executive influence legislative processes and their outcomes. First, an event history analysis of Brazilian legislative data (1988-2004) examines legislative approval and rejection as well as their timing. Next, I conduct case studies of key legislative issues in post-authoritarian Brazil (pension reform, presidential decree authority, gun control, and political reform). Evidence provides support for the arguments of this dissertation

Governability and Accountability in Brazil: Dilemma of Coalitional Presidentialism

This article seeks to answer an important puzzle in Brazilian politics:What explains the legislative struggles and defeats by a president who holds alarge congressional base? In the post-democratization period, most Brazilianpresidents have amassed large congressional bases of support by forminggoverning coalitions comprised of various legislative parties. Conventionalwisdom would indicate that large legislative bases would facilitate presidentsto pursue their legislative agenda. However, successive presidents have facedlegislative obstruction, gridlock, and defeats in Congress. This article showshow Brazil’s political institutions engender the perpetual need for presidents tocreate multiparty coalitions to navigate through the system and how this impactspolicymaking processes and political accountability. Specifically, (1) legislativecoalitions have unique challenges that are not present in parties; (2) intra-coalitiondynamics is at least as important as inter-coalition conflict in a coalitionalpresidential system; (3) failure to effectively manage coalitions generate greaterlegislative obstructionism and delay; and (4) challenges of managing coalitionshave led to a series of accountability problems in Brazil

0n climatology in Misasa spa (fifteenth report)

われわれは1956年以降,三朝温泉地の気候要素について観測を行ってきているが,今回は第14報にひきつづき1991年1月1日から1991年12月末日までの1カ年の気象観測の資料を報告することとした｡なお1985年4月1日以降は自動記録装置が備えられたので, 今回の資料はすべてこの自動記録装置によるものである｡Climatologlcal data of the last 12 months (1991.1.1-1991.12.31) obtained by the climate autorecording system at the Misasa Branch in Misasa spa, Tottori-ken, Japan are presented

Power Preponderance and Domestic Politics: Explaining Regional Economic Integration in Latin America and the Caribbean, 1960-1997. Working Paper Series, Vol. 3, No. 1, August 2002

(From the introduction). The promotion of regional integration is one of the more significant decisions in the post-WW II international political economy. Regional integration is a process in which two or more nations within a geographical region voluntarily adjust economic and other policies to produce a fusion of their economies and political institutions. This results in a slow pooling of nation-state sovereignty in evolving supranational institutions. The variation of this pooling is wide. Large amounts of sovereignty to date have already been pooled by Western European countries in the European Union (EU). At the opposite end of spectrum, we see nations of Latin America and the Caribbean in the same process but not having reached the same level of regional integration. The purpose of this paper is to explore the conditions conducive to regional economic integration in Latin America and the Caribbean. A review of the literature points to two fundamental conditions: domestic and regional. These conditions comprise the incentives and the disincentives for the propensity of country pairs to integrate. We examine Latin American and Caribbean integration for three reasons. First, we wish to explore the dynamics of the process of integration in the developing world. Second, the western hemisphere is a unique laboratory for integration. In the latter half of the twentieth century, four regional economic integration projects emerged in Latin America and the Caribbean: the Southern Cone Common Market (Mercosur in Spanish or Mercosul in Portuguese); the Andean Common Market (also known as the Andean Pact); the Central American Common Market (CACM), which later became the Central American Integration System (SICA); and the Caribbean Community (CARICOM). (1) Due to the longevity of some projects, the off-again and on-again traits of others, the uneven pace of development of regional institutions, and the mix of different sized countries, we have a variation along many dimensions. Third, the recent discussions for the resurrection of the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) warrant an examination