'Brazil Needs to Change': Change as Iteration and the Iteration of Change in Brazil's 2002 Presidential Election1

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's triumph in Brazil's 2002 presidential election was construed in terms of a promise of radical change against the holders of the status quo . This article argues that in fact a more subtle political game was a stake in the election, a contest over the meaning and limits of change itself. The article examines how the various players – Lula da Silva, outgoing president Fernando Henrique Cardoso and the PSDB's presidential candidate José Serra – invoked and iterated a discourse of change to define and redefine the political dividing lines that marked out the electoral dispute and attempted to set or fix the distinctions between their political positions.     

China’s Response to the Ebola Virus Disease in West Africa

This article examines the Chinese response to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, first surveying Chinese interests in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. Many Chinese workers have been evacuated and projects postponed. For the first time, China has extended humanitarian aid to countries facing a public health emergency. China is under pressure to ‘do something’ but faces its own developmental challenges as well as problems of logistics. Chinese knowledge of Africa is still relatively weak and uninformed. Although China’s assistance dwarves that from the other BRICS, the Ebola crisis has revealed problems in Sino-African relations, not least the gap between rhetoric and reality.     

Significance of the BRICS Mechanism

正The two-day Sixth BRICS(Brazil,Russia,India,China,South Africa)Summit,which convenes on July 15 in Fortaleza,Brazil,marks the fi rst session of the second cycle of BRICS Summits.Formulated as a global investment concept a decade or more ago,the BRICS group has held summits respectively in Yekaterinburg,Brasilia,Sanya,New Delhi,and Durban.Inter-BRICS cooperation began with the foreign ministers’meeting during the 2006 UN General Assembly,and progressed to the First BRICS Summit of 2009.The mechanism has since evolved into a framework for building partnerships in international politics,international economy and pragmatic cooperation.Centering on BRICS Summits,the partnership is buttressed     

Agrarian structure,foreign investment in land,and land prices in Brazil

The recent global rush for farmland in Latin America has produced a dramatic increase in the level of foreign investment in land in Brazil. The current trend accentuates the ongoing process of foreignization of agriculture associated with the production of grains, sugar, ethanol and other commodities, increasing land prices. In response, the Brazilian government reestablished a legal mechanism for ‘controlling’ land-based foreign investment which has proven neither efficient nor effective in solving land concentration. This paper examines this issue by analyzing the causes of the increase in investment as well as the consequences of this process with respect to land prices, critically situating land-based investments and the government's policy response in a broader discussion of the demands of agrarian social movements.     

Understanding rural resistance: contemporary mobilization in the Brazilian countryside

Contradictions between impressive levels of economic growth and the persistence of poverty and inequality are perhaps nowhere more evident than in rural Brazil. While Brazil might appear to be an example of the potential harmony between large-scale, export-oriented agribusiness and small-scale family farming, high levels of rural resistance contradict this vision. In this introductory paper, we synthesize the literature on agrarian resistance in Brazil and situate recent struggles in Brazil within the Latin American context more broadly. We highlight seven key characteristics of contemporary Latin American resistance, which include: the growth of international networks, the changing structure of state–society collaboration, the deepening of territorial claims, the importance of autonomy, the development of alternative economies, continued opposition to dispossession, and struggles over the meaning of nature. We argue that by analyzing rural mobilization in Brazil, this collection offers a range of insights relevant to rural contention globally. Each contribution in this collection increases our understanding of alternative agricultural production, large-scale development projects, education, race and political parties in the contemporary agrarian context.     

巴西开发不发达地区的重要举措

在开发不发达地区的问题上,巴西采取了诸如积极扩大筹措资金和投资的管道,坚持交通问题须先行的原则,实行移民垦殖的优惠政策,通过用发展工业的方式来带动后进地区农业的开发,积极寻求合资项目,加快后进地区的发展步伐,为实现政治、经济、文化中心转移而做出迁都举措,通过建立自由贸易区来带动周边地区的发展等重要措施,既有成功的经验,也有可资吸取的教训.     

Is Brazil becoming a “boring” country?

The article looks at the condition of Brazil's political system in light of the 1998 electoral results. It critically examines arguments that electoral volatility, political fragmentation and weak institutionalisation have produced a highly unstable political system unsuitable for sound policy‐making and processing change. While not underestimating the influence of electoral rules, it argues that given the combination of political, institutional and economic turmoil of the 1980s, it is not surprising that electoral volatility over the period was amongst the highest in the world. Arguably, however, these factors are now having a diminished impact on the political system, lessening volatility and allowing the emergence of a more institutionalised party system.     

Domestic regulatory reform and transgovernmental networks: Brazil and China in the global competition regime

Developing countries increasingly participate in transgovernmental networks of global regulatory governance, but they do so in different ways. This article aims to provide an explanation for this variation for two of the major emerging powers in the world economy, Brazil and China, in their transition toward more active players in the global competition regime. Distinguishing between bilateral and multilateral transgovernmental networks and examining the domestic factors conditioning the transition of their national competition agencies from rule-takers to rule-promoters or rule-makers through these networks, the article makes theoretical contributions to the linkage between transgovernmentalism and the regulatory state. I argue that differing political needs and the incomplete process of regulatory state formation push domestic agencies to join transgovernmental networks, with a need for greater legitimacy steering the Brazilian regulators to multilateral networks and facilitating their transition from rule-takers to rule-promoters. The Chinese agencies' primary need for expertise rather than legitimacy, by contrast, led them to pursue technical assistance and cooperation via bilateral relationships. The Chinese approach has slowed its transition from rule-taker to rule-promoter where its norms and practices are aligned with the established powers. Such approach will further impede its transition into a global rule-maker in areas of competition law and policy where China's preferences diverge.     

新民主主义革命时期干部教育的历史经验及其启示

中国共产党历来高度重视干部教育工作,早在新民主主义革命时期,就通过广泛的干部教育,培养和造就了一支能坚决贯彻执行党的路线、方针和政策高素质干部队伍,为革命胜利提供了坚强的人才保障。党在新民主主义革命时期的干部教育工作,为我国干部教育培训积累了丰富的历史经验。这些经验对我国当前的干部教育培训工作仍有重要的启示意义。