Brazil: an emerging military power? The problem of the use of force in Brazilian international relations in the 21st century

The central goal of this paper is thinking about the Brazilian military power and its linking to the international ambitions of the country in the 21st century. After a comparative analysis to other BRICs and with a historical one about Brazil's strategic irrelevance, we aim to establish what the minimum military capacity Brazil would need in order to meet the country's latest international interests. Similarly, it will be discussed if the National Strategy of Defense, approved in 2008, and the recent strategic agreements signed with France represent one more step toward this minimum military capacity.

Never before seen in Brazil: Luis Inácio Lula da Silva's grand diplomacy

Critical assessment of Luis Inácio Lula da Silva's diplomacy, which departed from the previous patterns of the Brazilian Foreign Service, to align itself with the political conceptions of the Workers' Party. This diplomacy has neither consolidated the position of Brazil as a regional leader, nor attained its declared goal of inserting Brazil into the United Nations Security Council, although it has reinforced Brazil's image in the international scenarios; but this was achieved much more through the personal activism of the President himself, than through normal diplomatic work.

A new Strategic Dialogue: Brazil-US relations in Lula's presidency (2003-2010)

The aim of this article is to examine Brazil and the United States bilateral relations from 2003/2010 and their strategic patterns during the Presidency of Luis Inácio Lula da Silva. The goal is to understand the development of this dialogue in the 21st century and its previous background in the Post Cold War world, identifying its evolution and change due to Brazil's growing regional and global role and US relative position

Climate governance in an international system under conservative hegemony: the role of major powers

In the last five years, climate change has been established as a central civilizational driver of our time. As a result of this development, the most diversified social processes - as well as the fields of science which study them - have had their dynamics altered. In International Relations, this double challenge could be explained as follows: 1) in empirical terms, climate change imposes a deepening of cooperation levels on the international community, considering the global common character of the atmosphere; and 2) to International Relations as a discipline, climate change demands from the scientific community a conceptual review of the categories designed to approach the development of global climate governance. The goal of this article is to discuss in both conceptual and empirical terms the structure of global climate change governance, through an exploratory research, aiming at identifying the key elements that allow understanding its dynamics. To do so, we rely on the concept of climate powers. This discussion is grounded in the following framework: we now live in an international system under conservative hegemony that is unable to properly respond to the problems of interdependence, among which - and mainly -, the climate issue.

India, Latin America, and the Caribbean during the Cold War

In this period, the key to the relationship between India and Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) was based in the political nature of this liaison: it was a "uni-multilateral" relationship, centered in India, where LAC countries operated as a group of autonomous entities (an "island chain" structure), and not as a unit of a supranational character with unified international conduct (an island structure). As we will see, faced with uniform and consistent Indian policies, LAC had national policies which make it impossible to discuss a regional policy towards India. The goal of this work is to form a general characterization of the bilateral policies during the period of the Cold War with the intent of identifying the key explanatory factors of the process. While this may be a limited objective, it addresses the non-existence of an academic debate surrounding the topic. We intend to contribute an analysis which in this phase is primarily descriptive.

The 1623 Plan for Global Governance: the obscure history of its reception

Abstract In the present article we analyze the characteristics and the reception of the first plan for global governance, the New Cyneas by Émeric Crucé. With this goal in mind, we examine the history of its readings and the possible influence on the Duke of Sully's project for European confederation, the case most often cited by historians of ideas. Our analysis takes into consideration the 17th century reception, the scant dissemination of the work and the possible causes of its limited impact. Our conclusions support, on the one hand, the novelty of Crucé's principal ideas, and on the other, their limited impact over the time with the exception of the period surrounding the creation of the League of Nations.

Sample surveys via electronic mail: a comprehensive perspective

Although postal questionnaires, personal interviewing, and telephone interviewing are the main methods of survey-based research, there is an increasing use of e-mail as a data collection medium. However, little, if any, published Western research in general and that of Turkish in particular have investigated e-mail survey technique from pure survey research perspective. Attempting to develop a framework to assess e-mail as a data collection mean, the purpose of this study is to explore e-mail-based questionnaire technique from complementary angles. To this goal, sample representativeness, data quality, response rates, and advantages and disadvantages of e-mail surveying are discussed.

How middle managers contribute to strategy formation process: connection of strategy processes and strategy practices

The role of middle management is essential when managing integrative and emergent strategy formation processes. We stand out the importance of its role connecting micro and macro organizational level offering a very important contribution when examining the strategy-as-practice perspective and integrative strategy formation process. The main goal of this research is to analyse the relationship between the integrative strategy formation process and the roles of middle management under the strategy-as-practice perspective. To check it out we adopted a qualitative methodology droving a case analysis in a Spanish University. Data was collected by means of personal interviews with members of different levels of the Institution, documents analysis and direct observation. In advance of some results we find out that the University develops an integrative strategy formation process and confers to middle management an important role extended all over the organization.

DISPOSITION EFFECT AMONG BRAZILIAN EQUITY FUND MANAGERS

The disposition effect predicts that investors tend to sell winning stocks too soon and ride losing stocks too long. Despite the wide range of research evidence about this issue, the reasons that lead investors to act this way are still subject to much controversy between rational and behavioral explanations. In this article, the main goal was to test two competing behavioral motivations to justify the disposition effect: prospect theory and mean reversion bias. To achieve it, an analysis of monthly transactions for a sample of 51 Brazilian equity funds from 2002 to 2008 was conducted and regression models with qualitative dependent variables were estimated in order to set the probability of a manager to realize a capital gain or loss as a function of the stock return. The results brought evidence that prospect theory seems to guide the decision-making process of the managers, but the hypothesis that the disposition effect is due to mean reversion bias could not be confirmed.

INTERNATIONALIZATION OF BRAZILIAN FRANCHISE CHAINS: A COMPARATIVE STUDY

The primary goal of this paper is to comprehend the fundamental organizational differences between Brazilian franchise chains that only operate in the home market and Brazilian franchise chains that operate internationally. The sample chosen for this study comprehends 96 Brazilian franchises operating in the home market and 67 franchises with international operations; logistic regression was used to analyze data obtained from these sources. Our findings suggest that the development of a brand in international operations can be strategic for certain Brazilian franchise chains; this seems to be, however, a scarce resource for many franchises and it could be developed through international operations. With regard to the fees charged, the outcomes demonstrate that Brazilian franchises with international operations tend to charge lower fees from its franchisees to install new units. Regarding the monitoring and control of franchises, there is evidence that the monitoring capability is one of the determining factors in the development of Brazilian franchises international operations.

Health and poverty: health management by the woman

The goal this follow-up study was to relate the mother's marital satisfaction to family health status in a low SES. The random sample was made up of 30 families with children under 7 years old: 15 considered as sick (Group A) and 15 as healthy (Group B). Both group had similar demographic characteristics (age of father and mother, persons per family group and age of children) and SES. Results showed that mothers were those mainly in charge of their family groups. Mothers of Group A were significantly less understanding and more dissatisfied than those of Group B ( p < .05 and p < .01). Mothers of Group A had significantly more arguments with their partners than those of Group B (p < .006). Health care was learned less from the child's own mother in group A than in B (p < .05). Health was considered by mothers of Group A as something that "must be taken care of" more than by those of Group B (p < .01). The behaviours of mothers in choosing one of the health systems was similar in both groups. Dissatisfied mothers were associated more with sick family members during the 6 month follow-up. It is suggested that the satisfaction of the mother is a factor that needs further investigation because health is managed by mothers is the large majority of families.

Multidimensional aspects related to shiftworkers' health and well-being

The impact of shift and night work on health shows a high inter- and intra-individual variability, both in terms of kind of troubles and temporal occurrence, related to various intervening factors dealing with individual characteristics, lifestyles, work demands, company organisation, family relations and social conditions. The way we define "health" and "well-being" can significantly influence appraisals, outcomes and interventions. As the goal is the optimisation of shiftworkers' health, it is necessary to go beyond the health protection and to act for health promotion. In this perspective, not only people related to medical sciences, but many other actors (ergonomists, psychologists, sociologists, educators, legislators), as well as shiftworkers themselves. Many models have been proposed aimed at describing the intervening variables mediating and/or moderating the effects; they try to define the interactions and the pathways connecting risk factors and outcomes through several human dimensions, which refer to physiology, psychology, pathology, sociology, ergonomics, economics, politics, and ethics. So, different criteria can be used to evaluate shiftworkers' health and well-being, starting from biological rhythms and ending in severe health disorders, passing through psychological strain, job dissatisfaction, family perturbation and social dis-adaptation, both in the short- and long-term. Consequently, it appears rather arbitrary to focus the problem of shiftworkers' health and tolerance only on specific aspects (e.g. individual characteristics), but a systemic approach appears more appropriate, able to match as many variables as possible, and aimed at defining which factors are the most relevant for those specific work and social conditions. This can support a more effective and profitable (for individuals, companies, and society) adoption of preventive and compensative measures, that must refer more to "countervalues" rather than to "counterweights".

Edentulism and shortened dental arch in Brazilian elderly from the National Survey of Oral Health 2003

OBJECTIVE: To describe the distribution of edentulism and estimate the prevalence of functional dentition and shortened dental arch among elderly population. METHODS: A population-based epidemiological study was carried out with a sample of 5,349 respondents aged 65 to 74 years obtained from the 2002 and 2003 Brazilian Ministry of Health/Division of Oral Health survey database. The following variables were studied: gender; macroregion of residence; missing teeth; percentage that met the World Health Organization goal for oral health in the age group 65 to 74 years (50% having at least 20 natural teeth); presence of shortened dental arch; number of posterior occluding pairs of teeth. The Chi-square test assessed the association between categorical variables. The Kruskal-Wallis and Mann-Whitney tests were used to assess differences of mean between number of posterior occluding pairs teeth, macro-region and gender. RESULTS: The elderly population had an average of 5.49 teeth (SD: 7.93) with a median of 0. The proportion of completely edentulous respondents was 54.7%. Complete edentulism was 18.2% in the upper arch and 1.9% in the lower arch. The World Health Organization goal was achieved in 10% of all respondents studied. However, only 2.7% had acceptable masticatory function and aesthetics (having at least shortened dental arch) and a mean number of posterior occluding pairs of 6.94 (SD=2.97). There were significant differences of the percentage of respondents that met the World Health Organization goal and presence of shortened dental arch between men and women. There were differences in shortened dental arch between macroregions. CONCLUSIONS: The Brazilian epidemiological oral health survey showed high rate of edentulism and low rate of shortened dental arch in the elderly population studied, thus suggesting significant functional and aesthetic impairment in all Brazilian macroregions especially among women.