November 18, 2023
InterviewsRules of Restraint
Fiscal politics in Brazil, Germany, and the European Union
The majority of countries in the world have some sort of fiscal rule: an institutional constraint on fiscal policies to discourage government overspending and reduce political influence on state expenditure. But these rules have their own politics. As Clara Zanon…
October 5, 2023
AnalysisThe Politics of Fiscal Restraint
Three decades of rule-based fiscal policy in Brazil
The adoption of fiscal rules has emerged as a global trend over the past four decades. While institutional constraints to fiscal policy were uncommon before the 1990s, recent data indicates that they have since been put in force in more…
August 10, 2023
AnalysisElusive Boundaries
The politics of public-private relations in Brazilian water provision
In April 2021, private investors gathered at B3, Brazil’s stock exchange, to bid for water concessions in Rio de Janeiro. The former capital city and its surrounding municipalities had been divided into four “concession blocks,” all of which were up…
August 5, 2023
AnalysisThe Agribusiness Pact
The “reprimarization” of the Brazilian economy
Over the past two decades, Brazilian media and political discourse have exalted the uncontroversial success of a magical entity known as “agribusiness.” Closely associated with the rise of commodity exports such as soy, sugarcane, and corn, “agribusiness” has come to…
December 3, 2022
AnalysisRealignments
Bolsonarismo and Brazil’s shifting middle-class vote
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva may have won last month’s presidential elections, but the strength of Bolsonarismo has been confirmed. In both houses of the National Congress, Bolsonarismo and its allies made gains, overcoming the traditional right wing. In the…
November 30, 2022
InterviewsBittersweet Tides
Chile, Brazil, and the future of the Latin American Left
The recent victories of left parties across Latin America—most recently the election of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Brazil—have prompted comparisons with the Pink Tide of the early 2000s. But with narrow margins of victory against far-right opponents,…
Domestic Politics & Planetary Change
Will a Lula victory be better for the climate than anything that happens at COP27?
Will a Lula victory be better for the climate than anything that happens at COP27?
October 26, 2022
AnalysisTown & City
Reading Brazil’s first round election results
Earlier this month, Brazilians went to the polls in an election billed as the most momentous since democratization in 1985. Far-right president Jair Bolsonaro faced off against former two-term president Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva. Though Lula did win the…
May 28, 2022
AnalysisFarmland Assets
International finance and the transformation of Brazil’s agricultural lands
The election of Jair Bolsonaro in 2018 commenced a long agenda of environmental destruction in Brazil. Before taking office, Bolsonaro had openly threatened Indigenous communities with racist attacks, commenting that Indigenous peoples should not have “an inch of land” and…
May 14, 2022
AnalysisPersisting Paternalisms
The Auxilio Brasil in perspective
In recent months Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro appears to have shape-shifted. From a staunch ally of business interests, he now presents himself as a president of the poor. The basis of this transformation is his new conditional cash-transfer programme Auxilio…
March 26, 2022
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Brazil's nearly 70-year-old national oil company, Petrobrás, faces criticism from across the political spectrum for its simultaneous price hikes and record breaking annual profits.
March 27, 2021
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Frequent mass shootings and recurring political struggle over gun control measures are uniquely American social phenomena.
March 19, 2021
InterviewsParty Politics and Social Policy
A conversation between Lena Lavinas, André Singer, and Barbara Weinstein on three decades of party politics and social policy in Brazil.
In The Takeover of Social Policy by Financialization, Lena Lavinas names the “Brazilian Paradox”: the model of social inclusion implemented by the Workers’ Party under President Lula and President Rousseff promotes a logic of financial inclusion and market incorporation, and…
January 23, 2021
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Outside of Brazil, the Bolsa Familia is known as the hallmark social policy of the former President Lula and remains the world's largest conditional cash transfer program. Less well known is the history of Brazil's social policy in the early…
January 9, 2021
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The deep divisions in American political and social life have long been thought to explain the unique weakness of America’s welfare infrastructure, and the absence of an integrated system of universal benefits. But on their own, demographic divisions need not…