Understanding food security and international security links in the context of climate change

Food production has been changing significantly in recent years as a result of climate change and of growing demand for food. This article aims to understand the link between food security and international security in the context of climate change, applying a systematic and qualitative analysis of the literature using the bibliometric method. This research observes that climate change tends to affect agricultural productivity, exposing societies to risk and the need for migration. However, good governance, together with international cooperation, can reduce the hazards of food insecurity, strengthening ties between countries and stimulating a fairer and more inclusive form of international trade.     

Constructing Self-Enforcing Federalism in the Early United States and Modern Russia

All federal systems face the two fundamental dilemmas of federalism:too strong a center risks overawing the subnational units; andtoo weak a center risks free-riding that makes the system fallapart. Resolving the two dilemmas is problematic because mitigatingone dilemma exacerbates the other. We develop a model of federalinstitutions that shows the circumstances under which both dilemmascan be solved so that federal institutions are self-enforcing.We apply our approach to modern Russia where we suggest thatwhen the center is too strong, its ability to extract rentsincreases and the benefits for maintaining participation inthe federal bargain disappears. We also suggest strong parallelsbetween Russia and those of the early United States under theArticles of Confederation.     

Training for Cultural Production and Management in Brazil

This article aims to contribute to the field of arts management by identifying the need to make cultural production/management an established field of professional practice and training in Brazil, and the challenges of doing so. To accomplish this, we reviewed several publications and we present first a discourse on theoretical texts in relation to the idea of culture and systems of cultural production and then an analysis of arts management publications in Brazil with observations about this field of work. In this article, we address the current paucity of training opportunities of this kind, the extent to which these roles have yet to be professionalized, and indicate, in the conclusion, that this is a matter of increasing importance and concern for cultural policy in Brazil.     

Committee jurisdiction, congressional behavior and policy outcomes

The literature on congressional committees has largely overlooked the impact of jurisdictional fights on policy proposals and outcomes. This paper develops a theory of how legislators balance the benefits of expanded committee jurisdiction against preferred policy outcomes. It shows why (a) senior members, and junior members in safe seats, are most likely to challenge a committee’s jurisdiction; (b) policy proposals may be initiated off the proposer’s ideal point for jurisdictional gains; (c) policy outcomes will generally be more moderate with jurisdictional fights than without these turf wars. We empirically investigate these results examining proposed Internet intellectual property protection legislation in the 106th Congress.     

Are Patriots Bigots? An Inquiry into the Vices of In‐Group Pride

One view in the study of intergroup conflict is that pride implies prejudice. However, an increasing number of scholars have come to view in-group pride more benignly, suggesting that such pride can be accompanied by a full range of feelings toward the out-group. In this article, we focus on a substantively interesting case of in-group/out-group attitudes—national pride and hostility toward immigrants. We explore the relationship in two fundamental ways: first by examining the prejudice associated with various dimensions of pride, and second by embedding these relationships in a comprehensive model of prejudice. We find that national pride is most validly measured with two dimensions—patriotism and nationalism—two dimensions that have very different relationships with prejudice. While nationalists have a strong predilection for hostility toward immigrants, patriots show no more prejudice than does the average citizen.     

Voltammetric determination of cocaine in confiscated samples using a cobalt hexacyanoferrate film-modified electrode

In this work, a fast, non destructive voltammetric method for cocaine detection in acetonitrile medium using a platinum disk electrode chemically modified with cobalt-hexacyanoferrate (CoHCFe) film is described. The deposition of CoHCFe film at platinum disk (working electrode) was carried out in aqueous solution containing NaClO₄ at 0.1 mol L⁻¹ as supporting electrolite. Stability studies of the film and subsequent voltammetric analysis of cocaine were made in acetonitrile medium with NaClO₄ at 0.1 mol L⁻¹ as supporting electrolite. A reversible interaction between cocaine and CoHCFe at the film produces a proportional decrease of original peak current, due to the formation of a complex between cocaine and cobalt íons, with subsequent partial passivation of the film surface, being the intensity of current decrease used as analytical signal for cocaine. A linear dependence of cocaine detection was carried out in the range from 2.4 × 10⁻⁴ to 1.5 × 10⁻³ mol L⁻¹, with a linear correlation coefficient of 0.994 and a detection limit of 1.4 × 10⁻⁴ mol L⁻¹. The analysis of confiscated samples by the proposed method indicated cocaine levels from 37% to 95% (m/m) and these results were validated by comparison to HPLC technique, being obtained good correlation between both methods.     

Political Parties and Governors as Determinants of Legislative Behavior in Brazil's Chamber of Deputies, 1988–2006

This article examines the relative importance of regional and national forces in shaping the behavior of Brazilian legislators at the national level. A widely held view is that national legislators respond to state pressures in making decisions, rather than pressures from the national government. Governors not only can influence national debates but also can determine outcomes by exerting control over their states' legislative delegations. This article examines a dataset of all roll-call votes in the Chamber of Deputies between 1989 and 2006 to isolate and evaluate the impact of local pressures on legislative voting. Spanning the terms of five presidents and five different congresses, the data show that the local influence is weaker than the national on the voting decisions of individual legislators and the voting cohesion of state delegations. Alternative institutional resources allow the central government to counteract the centrifugal pressures of federalism and other institutional influences.     

Estimation of Opportunity Inequality in Brazil using Nonparametric Local Logistic Regression

Abstract

This article measured opportunity inequality in Brazil by combining a series of theoretical and empirical tools. The database was built using a two-sample instrumental variable (TSIV), developed by Angrist and Krueger. After that, the axiomatic approach put forward by O'Neill et al. was used, in which the estimation of children's income distribution function is conditional on their fathers' wages. The inference process was based on nonparametric local logistic regression. The results indicate that Brazil has a high level of opportunity inequality. In other words, in the context of intergenerational mobility, those whose fathers belong to lower income strata have to expend greater effort in order to attain a certain income level.