Transisi Menuju Demokrasi : Rangkaian Kemungkinan Dan Ketidakapastian

21 cm.;xvi+117 ha

Old 'foundations' and new 'rules' - For an enlarged European Union

This paper presents a novel arrangement for the distribution of votes and the rules of decision-making in an enlarged European Union (EU). We make two assumptions: (1) that the EU is condemned to enlarge its membership in the near future; and (2) if it does this without changing the existing rules for voting in the Council of Ministers and distributing seats in the European Parliament, such an expanded EU would suffer severe distortions and disequilibria. However, if it were to adopt a new, simplified system that would combine arrangements for proportional proportionality in representation and concurrent majorities in decision-making, this impending dilemma could be avoided. Moreover, if these reforms were introduced sooner rather than later, they would be easier to agree upon, their impact would be phased in gradually, and their legitimacy could be stabilized in the face of far greater challenges in the future.institutions; enlargement; majority voting; Council of Ministers; European Parliament; political science

Diálogos com Guillermo O'Donnell

O artigo relembra a figura do cientista político argentino Guillermo O'Donnell (1936-2011) e reconsidera criticamente aspectos centrais de sua obra, particularmente sua tipologia de regimes autoritários modernos e suas análises da transição para e consolidação da democracia em países de experiência autoritária recente.<br>An hommage in the form of a critical reflexion on Guillermo O'Donnell's (1936-2011) tipology of authoritarian regimes and his analysis of democratic transition and consolidation in countries of recent authoritarian experience

O modelo institucional dos anos 30 e a presente crise brasileira

A primeira parte do artigo procura demonstrar, com dados de pesquisas feitas pelo Idesp junto às elites brasileiras, que existe um acelerado processo de reorientação ideológica no tocante ao modelo de desenvolvimento econômico iniciado nos anos 30. A segunda argumenta que o modelo político-institucional requer igualmente uma revisão profunda, pois assenta-se sobre um tripé extremamente problemático no que se refere à conformação individual de cada um dos três componentes, e mais ainda quando se pensa na combinação dos três numa mesma estrutura institucional: arranjos exacerbadamente consociativos na esfera eleitoral-partidária, corporativismo na área sindical e presidencialismo plebiscitáio como suposto fator de unificação, na cumieira do sistema político. A terceira delineia a alternativa parlamentarista e o reforço da mesma por meio de mudanças no sistema eleitoral.<br>In the first part of the article the author uses surveys conducted by Idesp in order to argue that Brazilian elites are guickly reexamining the ideological conceptions on which the growth model initiated int the 1930's was based. In the second part he argues that the politico-institucional model will also require deep reexaminado a. According to him that model was an attempt to combine corporatism in the interest representation sphere with strongly consociational electoral and party arrangements and plebiscitarían presidentialism as an would-be unifying factor on top of a highly fragmented system. In the final section the author outlines a parliamentarist alternative and the electoral reforms needed to reinforce it

Double Take

The Polity data are widely used to explore the causes and consequences of democratic authority patterns. These data often have been used uncritically. The authors explore some of the theoretical and empirical characteristics of these data. They show how the analytical composition of the well-known democracy and autocracy scores is not upheld by an empirical analysis of the component measurements and demonstrate that democracy, as measured by the Polity indicators, is fundamentally a reflection of decisional constraints on the chief executive. The recruitment and participation dimensions are shown to be empirically extraneous despite their centrality in democratic theory. The authors conclude that it is a mistake to overlook the categorical nature of these data and that an analysis of the constituent authority patterns is likely to be fruitful for the democratic peace and democratization literature