The Gordian Knot of Brazilian Foreign Policy: Promoting democracy while respecting sovereignty

President Cardoso has provided decisive impetus for strengthening Brazil's commitment to democracy abroad, both through multilateral diplomacy and foreign policy. However, there exist inherent tensions between the dual principles guiding Brazilian foreign policy, the promotion and protection of democracy abroad and the attachment to national sovereignty and non-interference in internal affairs. This study assesses Brazil's response to threats to democracy during the last decade in 10 case studies. It argues that presidential diplomacy has played a key role in furthering the democratic commitment of Brazilian foreign policy. The author thanks Paulo Roberto de Almeida, Juan Fernando London ?o, Anja Linder, and Riordan Roett and gratefully acknowledges the support of the Democracy Coalition Project (DCP) of the Open Society Institute (OSI) in Washington DC.     

Chemical, physical and mineralogical characterization of soils from the Curitiba Metropolitan Region for forensic purpose

The objective of this paper is to propose a soil characterization methodology for forensic use, based on physical (textural and spectroscopic analyses), chemical (extractions with hydrofluoric acid, ammonium oxalate, sodium dithionite-citrate-bicarbonate and NaOH solution) and mineralogical (thermal analyses and X-ray diffraction) analyses. The study was carried out in the State of Paraná, Brazil, in three neighborhoods of Curitiba city and in two cities within the Curitiba Metropolitan Region. In order to verify the similarity between samples, four composite samples (repetitions) were prepared in each of the five studied sites. It was obtained a great number of quantitative variables (56) from a reduced amount of soil sample (1g). The variables selected from the chemical extractions (16) were more precise in grouping similar samples (same horizon and sampling site) as well as in separating samples collected in different horizons or sites. Seven distinct groups were formed, each with high intragroup similarity, but the unexpected dispersion of two samples (from a total of 40 samples) reduced the distinction of three other studied groups. The placement of the two samples in a different group and the higher dispersion (24 samples) for samples collected in the city of Curitiba are due to the great pedological homogeneity of this area (physical-chemical horizon characteristics, soil color and parent material). The methodology used in this work (analytical method and data treatment) presents high potential for forensic studies and can be easily validated for other areas.     

Grounding transnational business governance: A political-strategic perspective on government responses in the Global South

Recent scholarship on transnational business governance has begun to examine public-private interactions and the active role of governments. We make two key contributions that integrate and expand this literature. First, in juxtaposition to functionalist accounts, we foreground the fundamentally political and often contentious character of these interactions. As private transnational governance schemes and standards “hit the ground,” private-public interactions, we argue, are embedded in national political arenas and tied to domestic distributional struggles among competing regulatory coalitions. Building upon multiple empirical streams of research, we develop a political-strategic framework that maps the diversity of Southern government responses (substitute, adopt, repurpose, replace, or reject) to transnational private governance. Our framework shows that government responses are a function of both strategic fit with domestic industrial capabilities and structures, and strength of developmental state capacity. Second, our proposed framework adopts the vantage point of Global South governments and industries, particularly how development challenges and strategic options within global value chains affect their understanding of, and responses to, transnational schemes and standards. This is an important corrective to a Northern bias in the private governance literature.     

The ethics of maxima and minima combined with social justice as a form of public corruption prevention

In recent decades, corruption has become one of the main problems perceived by Spanish society. As a result, the country’s citizens are experiencing a high level of disenchantment with politics and a general loss of confidence in the way public institutions function. Although in the last few years more stringent laws have been brought in to speed up procedures and help pursue crimes of corruption, the fact of the matter is that they have done little to reduce these cases and so they are not enough to put an end to the problem. There is a strong likelihood that, if a positive morality and a strong mutual union between ethics and politics were in place, legal loopholes would not be used for individual profitmaking operations that make a mockery of justice and the common good. Because of this, and taking public ethics as a basis, this article will review and discuss Adela Cortina’s hermeneutic definitions “of maxima and minima” and Agustín Domingo Moratalla’s concept of “social justice” in order to suggest tools that can be applied in preventing and fighting against political corruption.

     

Empowering Consumers Through Data and Smart Technology: Experimental Evidence on the Consequences of Time‐of‐Use Electricity Pricing Policies

This paper investigates the extent to which technology used to automate household responses to time‐of‐use pricing for electricity leads to higher energy savings than simply providing households with information on current prices and quantities. Using a large randomized field trial, we find that informed households with “smart” thermostats achieve impressive reductions in consumption during on‐peak periods of up to 48 percent, but also engage in substantial load shifting to off‐peak hours. We also document the extent to which household responses to time‐of‐use pricing are heterogeneous and vary significantly by demographics, weather, and across the usage distribution.     

Campaign‐Style Enforcement and Regulatory Compliance

This article examines the recoupling mechanism of campaign‐style enforcement and its effects on environmental regulatory compliance. Drawing on the policy implementation literature and institutional theory, the authors develop a conceptual model of campaign‐style enforcement in which both resource mobilization and power redistribution are theorized to address decoupling problems in regulatory compliance. The two‐pathway recoupling mechanism is evidenced by an empirical investigation of the implementation of China's energy conservation and emission reduction policy as part of that country's 11th Five‐Year Plan. Findings suggest that campaign‐style enforcement can effectively improve regulatory compliance when it addresses the efficiency/legitimacy conflict by providing policy incentives and reorganizing a clear hierarchy of political authority. The article concludes with a discussion of the strengths and limitations of campaign‐style enforcement.