Agenda Power,Executive Decree Authority,and the Mixed Results of Reform in the Brazilian Congress

This article examines how institutional change in the use of extraordinary legislation affects delegation of power and unilateral action in new democracies. From 1988 to 2001, Brazilian presidents were able to reissue decrees indefinitely and thus had substantial legislative power. In 2001, Congress amended the constitution so as to restrict the president to a single reissue of each lapsed decree. This reform has had mixed results: although it ended the practice of infinite reissues, it induced Presidents Cardoso and Lula to use more decrees than previous executives had. Presidential agenda power, rather than being reduced, has been sharpened. By analyzing patterns of presidential initiatives from 1995 to 2005, we demonstrate the mixed results of this constitutional reform.     

FOR LACK OF ANYTHING BETTER? INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS AND GLOBAL CORPORATE CODES

This paper analyses the two most important international programmes for the voluntary regulation of corporate behaviour: the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Corporations and the UN Global Compact. It argues that international organizations adopted them mostly for reasons of political feasibility: by imposing minimal constraints on constituents the codes circumvented the most pressing problems of political acceptability associated with standard setting. It finds no clear evidence, however, that the network solutions adopted are technically more effective than traditional forms of regulation. The paper concludes that while it is unlikely that corporate behaviour will change simply as a result of participation in these programmes, if the programmes increase their ability to consistently discriminate between good and bad performers, the resulting ‘soft’ sanctioning power has the potential to alter corporate behaviour in the long run.