Inching Toward Accountability: The Evolution of Brazil's Anticorruption Institutions, 1985–2010

This article analyzes the evolution of the network of Brazilian federal accountability institutions over the course of the past generation, between the transition to democracy and the end of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's second term. Substantively, the article charts the significant gains that have been made in accountability institutions. Theoretically, it evaluates the evolution of these institutions as a consequence of the distribution of rules, routines, roles, and resources across a larger institutional network, demonstrating that changes in the various bureaucratic agencies have mutually reinforced each other and generated autocatalytic processes of reform.     

A Two‐Level Theory of Presidential Instability

This article analyzes the conditions that facilitate the ousting of Latin American presidents and the mechanisms that prevent their downfall. Drawing lessons from the impeachment of Paraguayan president Fernando Lugo, it extends previous arguments about the “legislative shield” to show that the same forces that sometimes conspire to terminate an administration at other times work to resist its demise. The argument underscores the interaction between legislators and social movements, two prominent actors in the literature on presidential instability. The article presents a two‐level theory to identify possible configurations of mass and legislative alignments, and tests some implications of the theory with data for 116 Latin American presidents over 28 years. Multiple comparison tests based on random effects logistic models show that popular protests can be neutralized by strong support in Congress, and hint at the possibility that legislative threats can be neutralized by loyal demonstrators in the streets.     

Technics over life: risk,ethics and the existential condition in high-tech antenatal care

The subject of this paper is the problem of selective abortion brought about by advanced techniques of foetal diagnosis. The issue of abortion today is analysed as an outcome and illustration of the emerging ‘vital politics’. The paper explores the technicality of this new form of bio-power, and the ethical practice and forms of subjectivity it imposes. Two main points are raised. First, it is argued that the implementation of state-of-the-art foetal diagnosis in clinical practice and maternity care is underlain by the rationales of control and experimentation. The ideas of risk and the dividual are introduced as the epistemic cornerstones of this practice of high-tech reproductive medicine according to the above rationales. Second, the paper argues that foetal diagnosis in antenatal care is characterised by an ethical split. This emerges when the machinery of reproductive health care withdraws into a position of technical responsibility and leaves the choice, and the ethical responsibility, concerning medical operations (selective abortion, in particular) to the pregnant woman. This suggests that high-tech biomedicine tends to individualise risks and to impose a form of ethical individuality characterised by the demand for reflexivity through personal risk assessment, producing the anxiety generated by existential responsibility.