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1 – 10 of over 1000This paper aims to analyze Brazil’s governmental positions during two international conflicts involving major Brazilian firms and two South American countries: the nationalization…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to analyze Brazil’s governmental positions during two international conflicts involving major Brazilian firms and two South American countries: the nationalization of Petrobras in Bolivia in 2006 and the expulsion of Odebrecht from Ecuador in 2008. Brazil’s government officials showed themselves to be not only open to negotiations but also understanding and cooperative with Bolivia. The same policymakers, however, showed no trace of this accommodating behavior toward Ecuador. This paper focuses on the explanatory power of the ideas of the ruling Workers’ Party and sustains that this party has played a crucial role on shaping the current government–business relations in Brazil.
Design/methodology/approach
This research applies process tracing analysis within two case studies; and content analysis to operationalize the concept “Workers’ Party’s ideas” using 14 Workers’ Party’s official documents. It investigates the circumstances under which political ideas guide policymaking.
Findings
This work found a correlation between Workers’ Party’s ideas and Brazil’s governmental positions which first benefited Bolivian demands. On the other hand, these ideas found no representation during negotiations with Ecuador. To explain this variation, this study tested the link between uncertainty and influence of ideas. Uncertainty was both an “activating condition”, allowing ideas to come into play in policymaking, and a “magnifying condition” showing the dynamic relationship between the level of uncertainty and the level of influence of ideas.
Originality/value
This study contributes to the evolving debate on business and government relations in Brazil by focusing on the role of ideas and interests on policymaking.
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Paulo R.A. Loureiro, Tito Belchior Silva Moreira and Roberto Ellery
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impacts of left Brazilian political parties and partisan disruption on the homicide rate in Brazil.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impacts of left Brazilian political parties and partisan disruption on the homicide rate in Brazil.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors use panel data for the states between the years 1980 and 2011. The database used is an unbalanced panel covering a sample of 27 Brazilian states over 32 years, 1980-2011, totaling about 855 observations.
Findings
It is estimated that these two political factors are sources that have connection to the increased level of violence in Brazil. These analyses provide several important results. First, partisan disruption is associated with a higher homicide rate, compared to non-partisan disruption. The results from the panel also suggest that left-parties in government have a positive impact on homicide, compared to non-left-parties.
Research limitations/implications
Information regarding premeditated homicides (CID-BR-9 database) is available for all Brazilian states, and may be tabulated from the same micro-data at any level of aggregation. Some of the well-known problems regarding the choice of this variable are as follows. First, deaths resulting from wounds are sometimes included in the statistics whether wounds were intentionally inflicted or not. In addition, some incidents end up not being registered because certain deaths are not reported. This tends to occur more frequently in rural areas. Fortunately, this second problem does not appear to be too significant, as under-registry of deaths due to external causes is much lower than the amount resulting from natural causes (see, e.g. Cano and Santos, 2000). In addition, this problem may be controlled if under-registry remains stable over time by applying fixed effects to the panel data.
Practical implications
The main Brazilian political parties diverge on the causes of crime and how criminals should be punished. For example, in Brazil, the minimum age for one individual to be punished with imprisonment is 18 years old. Practices crimes for young people between 12 and 18 implies only in socio-educational measures. Given the high level of violence in Brazil, there is a bill being debated in the parliament that proposes to reduce the age to 16 years. Based on the research, 90 percent of the population approves the reduction of age to 16 years. However, the majority of parliament is opposed to changing the law. In general, the more conservative parties are favorable to changing the law.
Social implications
These divergent postures can be associated with the ideological essence or to belief system of each political party. Political parties have the potential capacity of changing crime trends through economic and social policies as well as by applying stronger sanctions against crime. Given the law enforcement system, the cycle of crime in Brazil may be related to the profile of the political party elected.
Originality/value
The authors assume the hypothesis that the current Brazilian multi-partisan system has an incentive system in which politicians do not respond adequately to the basic wishes of voters. Among such desires, the authors emphasize public safety. This paper evaluates the empirical effect of partisan disruption on homicide rate.
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The paper is the story of the marginalization of the concept of networks of dyadic exchanges or patronage and clientage by Brazilian intellectuals and Brazilianist academics. I…
Abstract
The paper is the story of the marginalization of the concept of networks of dyadic exchanges or patronage and clientage by Brazilian intellectuals and Brazilianist academics. I contend that though it is a pervasive pattern in the culture of the nation, Brazilian intellectuals wrote about patronage/clientage as an aspect of politics that is responsible for the country's backwardness and underdevelopment. Anthropologists, for the most part, judged it to be exploitative of the people involved and believed that it should be eliminated. The Workers Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores or PT), as it implemented a highly commended conditional cash transfer program to help the poor, attempted to replace it with an alternative way they believed electoral politics ought to be conducted. I suggest that the pattern continues to be more than exchanges between political office seekers and voters in Brazil as it transcends the political, economic, and religious categories of modernity and may provide the most needy with what the labor market does not.
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Laure Célérier and Luis Emilio Cuenca Botey
– The purpose of this paper is to explore how accountability practices can enable sociopolitical emancipation.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore how accountability practices can enable sociopolitical emancipation.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors explore the emancipatory potential of accountability from a Bourdieusian perspective. The study is informed by a two-month socio-ethnographic study of the participatory budgeting (PB) process in Porto Alegre (Brazil). The field study enabled us to observe accountability and participatory practices, conduct 18 semi-structured interviews with councillors, and analyze survey data gathered from budgeting participants.
Findings
The paper demonstrates how PB both strengthened the dominants in the Porto Alegrense political field and changed the game played in this field; was characterized by accountability practices favouring the election of councillors with distinctive capitals, who were “dominated-dominants dominating the dominated”; brought emancipatory perspectives to councillors and, by doing so, opened the path to social change but also widened the gap with ordinary participants.
Research limitations/implications
The research supports Shenkin and Coulson’s (2007) thesis by demonstrating that accountability, when associated with participative democracy, can create substantial social change. Significantly, by investigating the emancipatory potential of accountability, the authors challenge the often taken-for-granted assumption in critical research that accountability reinforces asymmetrical power relations, and the authors explore alternative accountability practices. Doing so enables us to rethink the possibilities of accountability and their practical implications.
Originality/value
The authors study the most emblematic example of participatory democracy in South America; and the authors use Bourdieu’s theoretical framework to approach accountability at a community level.
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The purpose of this paper is to cover issues raised in the author’s plenary address to the Journal of Accounting and Organizational Network Conference held in Melbourne in…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to cover issues raised in the author’s plenary address to the Journal of Accounting and Organizational Network Conference held in Melbourne in November 2017. This called for accountants, whether professionals in practice or in academia, to broaden their vision of accounting and accountability beyond the financial accountability of organisations, and serving corporate and capital market interests, to consider how it can help achieve sustainable development goals.
Design/methodology/approach
The discussion is based on personal experience, cognate literature and policies of major global institutions.
Findings
Whilst the need for financial reporting will remain, there is a pressing need for reporting to measure, monitor and make accountable organisations’ obligations to help achieve sustainable development goals established by global institutions such as the United Nations. Areas of importance discussed are accounting for human rights, mitigation of climate change, securing decent work, increasing accountability – especially civil society democratic participation – and a greater and more equal partnership with stakeholders and developing countries to address their needs.
Research limitations/implications
The paper is a personal polemic intended to provoke reflection and reform amongst accountants.
Practical implications
The paper outlines the areas where accounting could and has addressed human rights and sustainability issues.
Social implications
The social implications are vast, for they extend to major issues concerning the preserving the planet, its species, humankind and enhanced democratic processes for civil society and developing countries.
Originality/value
The paper reinforces the need for policy reforms advocated by social and environmental accounting researchers.
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This paper aims to examine the origins and trajectory of the Brazilian corporate social responsibility (CSR) movement in relation to political economic developments in Brazil…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to examine the origins and trajectory of the Brazilian corporate social responsibility (CSR) movement in relation to political economic developments in Brazil during and prior to the 2000s.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper relies on a historical political account that traces the evolution of the main actors in the CSR movement since the democratization period, details the contacts established with relevant political and civil society groups and outlines the adaptation of their agenda to the changing context.
Findings
The long association between a faction of Brazilian business and the Workers’ Party (PT) and the overlapping state – society relations characteristic of the Brazilian political economy explain the domestic and international standing of the Brazilian CSR movement, in particular since 2003 when Lula da Silva came to power.
Originality/value
The trajectory of Brazilian CSR and participation in related global initiatives cannot be explained through market-based or isomorphic approaches traditionally used to analyze the diffusion of governance mechanisms in the Global South. Rather, it highlights the relevance of local political structures in shaping involvement in global governance initiatives.
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This paper aims to offer a preliminary overview and analysis of the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on commodity-dependent developing economies (CDDEs). Using debt, decarbonisation…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to offer a preliminary overview and analysis of the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on commodity-dependent developing economies (CDDEs). Using debt, decarbonisation and demand as empirical and analytical prisms to understand impacts and dynamics, the paper offers “rent space” as a theoretical tool to appreciate the changing possibilities for using resource rents for capital accumulation and expand development frontiers. It maps out the certain common features among this group of developing countries facing an increasingly adverse and uncertain situation. It offers a political economic perspective on the global dynamics and internal political situation that constrain these countries’ ability to manage the effects of this external shock that date to the 2008 crisis, and to therefore shore up an effective recovery in the coming years.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper draws together secondary literature and evidence from a number of sources including the World Bank, United Nations and International Monetary Fund on the empirical situation in these countries in view of COVID-19. The paper uses a thematic approach to understand how the current crisis has exposed these embedded and worsening vulnerabilities in this group of countries.
Findings
Results demonstrate the wide-ranging effects of COVID-19 as an existential crisis of demand in short and medium term, the explosion of debt due to actually occurring financialisation and the looming medium and long-term consequences of decarbonisation that may oblige countries to abandon exploitation of fossil fuel resources.
Originality/value
In the final analysis, COVID-19 has revealed a number of lingering effects of the commodity boom and global financial crisis. The increased indebtedness that resulted not only underscores the long-term unviability of commodity-based development as a strategy but also reveals new unprecedented weaknesses and challenges. Given the current configuration of global and domestic political economy dynamics, the paper shows that the “rent space” in fossil fuel exporters is particularly constrained and shrinking, compared to mineral exporters, but all showing a trend towards concentration in commodity production overall and worsening prospects for green recovery or industrial pathway.
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The outlook for the Brazilian Left.