On the Ruins of the Democratic Transition: Human Rights as an Agenda Item in Abeyance for the Brazilian Democracy

This article discusses one of the main controversies in Brazilian society at this moment: the development of a national policy of human rights and the return of the debate on political crimes committed under the military dictatorship from 1964 onwards. The main hypothesis associates the barriers imposed on that human rights policy to the way in which democracy was retaken in the country and the model on which important segments related to the authoritarian government occupied strategic roles. Even today, this presents a real difficulty in terms of recovery and, if necessary, punishment for the crimes committed by the government during the dictatorship, which in turn makes the development of human rights policies more complicated.     

Inequality,Distributive Justice and Political Participation: An Analysis of the Case of Chile

Political participation has frequently been associated with individual resources; that is, individuals with higher incomes, higher educational levels and more time tend to participate in the political process to a greater extent than other individuals do. The present study suggests that in addition to resources, an individual's beliefs about economic distribution are an important determinant of participation both in elections and in protests. Based on the analysis of the Chilean data from the Latin American Public Opinion Project (LAPOP) 2012, the results suggest that distributive beliefs are associated primarily with participation in protests.