Political interference and regulatory resilience in Brazil

Governments face a fundamental tradeoff between regulatory independence and control. Attempts of interference have the effect of reducing the system's level of commitment and credibility. On the other hand, an administration runs the risk that the autonomy delegated to regulators might be used to pursue outcomes that may harm their interests. This tradeoff is particularly relevant when there is an alternation of power with the arrival of a new political elite with different preferences. This paper uses data from a 2016 survey on regulatory governance applied to Brazilian regulatory agencies. This data is compared to a similar survey performed in 2005. The new survey results turn out to be surprisingly similar to those of a decade earlier, suggesting strong resilience of regulatory agencies despite significant attempts at political interference by powerful presidents. The factors explaining the resilience of regulatory governance in Brazil lie in its broader institutional endowment, which moderates the effects of executive interference.     

Designing for equitable civic engagement: Participatory design and discourse in contested spaces

A common theme of research on participatory democracy and citizen engagement centres on the need for empirical studies that conduct a deep exploration of the nuances and complexities of these processes. This article offers a distinct response to this need through an examination of two ethnographic case studies of a participatory budgeting process in a multilingual, highly diverse community in which Spanish-speaking Latino immigrants were involved. By analyzing participants discourse from the case studies, the findings highlight the risks and rewards of reframing participatory processes as design decisions rather than static procedures.     

Categorization of Narcomessages in Mexico: An Appraisal of the Attempts to Influence Public Perception and Policy Actions

The current article brings together the conclusions of an exercise carried out in an attempt to analyze and classify narcopropaganda, or “narcomessages” in Mexico. The analysis and classification of narcomessages is able to provide some insights about the motivations underlying the increase of violent attacks in the country; at the same time, the classification of these messages can help in the identification of those groups that are more likely to influence public perception and support public policy measures against them.     

On studying world order: A plea for systematic inquiry

Conclusion The creation of improved systems of world order requires great care. Alternative configurations may or may not prove more suitable, and each must be painstakingly examined on its own merits. For those of us who are actively concerned with studying about world order, this means the application of a far more rigorous conception of inquiry to our subject. So long as we cannot accept the Leibnizian claim that this is certainly the best of all possible worlds, our search for better ones must certainly be the best of all possible searches. This means that models of world order must be derived from appropriate hypotheses and subjected to the strictures of systematic analysis. World order studies must be treated in accordance with the strict canons of inquiry outlined in this essay. Only then can they begin to develop the highly generalized system of theory that characterizes any science.     

Ethics of Emotions as Ethics of Human Rights: A Jurisprudence of Sympathy in Adorno, Horkheimer and Rorty

This article considers in a different light the relationship between legal theory and ethics by means of an interpretation of the thought of Adorno and Horkheimer, and of the writings of Richard Rorty, as two moments of a marginal stream of ethics of passions that runs beneath the history of rationalist Western philosophy. It departs from the critique of Modernity as a dialectic of barbarism and civilisation, and from a genealogy of Auschwitz that finds its antecedents in Kantian morality. It also characterises modern culture as one of apathy and bourgeois stoicism, and establishes a link between the cold modern ethos and the dynamics of Nazi hardness. The article turns then to a consideration of some of the responses to the comprehensive crisis of Modernity: the imperative ‘Auschwitz never again’, Adorno’s ‘general enlightenment’ and Horkheimer’s ethics of sympathy. Finally it reflects upon Rorty’s proposal of sentimental education as an effective strategy to foster a human rights culture in Postmodernity, with the aim of bridging the tradition of moral sentiments and contemporary struggles for human rights. I am very grateful to Costas Douzinas, Sonia Romero, Shaun Haselhurst, David-Alexander Smith, José Bellido and the two anonymous referees for their comments, and to Alexander García-Düttman for his suggestions. This text is dedicated to Paul Gready.