As perspectivas políticas da criação do Estado de Carajás a partir do ponto de vista das representações parlamentares municipais

Este estudo trata da perspectiva de criação do Estado do Carajás sob o ponto de vista das representações parlamentares dos municípios das regiões sul e sudeste do Pará. As teorias sobre representação política e as críticas da teoria das elites nortearam a análise, visto que a temática da redivisão do território paraense tem inflamado os discursos de candidatos a cargos políticos, e durante a campanha do plebiscito de dezembro de 2011 o debate reverteu-se em animosidade entre as frentes pluripartidárias do sim e do não, pela alegação da frente oponente à emancipação, que a divisão tratava-se de um projeto político das elites locais. De base empírica, o levantamento de campo foi aplicado a vereadores dos 39 municípios da região. A pesquisa revelou que a mobilização política regionalista ancora-se na distância do poder decisório que deixaria a região fora da agenda governamental e enfatiza o esquecimento do poder público estadual. Os vereadores veem o novo estado como uma possibilidade de atender às demandas por políticas públicas e oportunidades de emprego e renda, mas percebem claramente uma oportunidade de crescimento de suas carreiras políticas e de aumentar a paridade na balança da representatividade do norte no Congresso Nacional.

Parlamento do Mercosul, integração e déficit democrático

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)

Parlamento do Mercosul: mudança ou continuidade?

The parliamentary representation in the Southern Cone integration is the main issue in this article, which analyzes some implications of the institutionalization of Mercosur Parliament (Parlasur). Consolidation and deepening of the integration process are related to the very weakness of congressional action under the Joint Parliamentary Committee and even the Parlasur. The hypothesis is that the creation of the Mercosur Parliament could contribute to the integration process only insofar as it could overcome the limitations experienced by the Joint Parliamentary Commission and go forward in building a democratic and representative body of regional integration.

'Beheading', Rule Manipulation and Fraud: The Approval of Election Results in Brazil, 1894-1930

Studies of electoral fraud tend to focus their analyses only on the pre-electoral or electoral phases. By examining the Brazilian First Republic (1889-1930), this article shifts the focus to a later phase, discussing a particular type of electoral fraud that has been little explored by the literature, namely, that perpetrated by the legislatures themselves during the process of giving final approval to election results. The Brazilian case is interesting because of a practice known as degola ('beheading') whereby electoral results were altered when Congress decided on which deputies to certify as duly elected. This has come to be seen as a widespread and standard practice in this period. However, this article shows that this final phase of rubber-stamping or overturning election results was important not because of the number of degolas, which was actually much lower than the literature would have us believe, but chiefly because of their strategic use during moments of political uncertainty. It argues that the congressional certification of electoral results was deployed as a key tool in ensuring the political stability of the Republican regime in the absence of an electoral court.

Ecos de Europa: la representación parlamentaria en el Chile liberal del siglo XIX

This paper explores the significant influences of European liberalism, and in particular French liberalism, in the Chilean thought and political culture/praxis during the construction of the State in the mid-19th century. It reveals and discusses the significant circulation of ideas that an array of Chilean travelers and exiles in several European countries generated and promoted in Chile in the middle of the 19th century. Among the intellectuals and politicians treated by this article are Andrés Bello, Manuel Antonio Tocornal, Santiago Arcos, Francisco Bilbao, Manuel Antonio Matta and Ángel Custodio Gallo.

Mind the Gap. Do Proportional Electoral Systems Foster a More Equal Representation of Women and Men, Poor and Rich ?

Female gender and low income are two markers for groups that have been historically disadvantaged within most societies. The study explores two research questions related to their political representation: 1) Are parties ideologically biased towards the ideological preferences of male and rich citizens? 2) Does the proportionality of the electoral system moderate the degree of underrepresentation of women and poor citizens in the party system? A multilevel analysis of survey data from 24 parliamentary democracies indicates that there is some bias against those with low income and, at a much smaller rate, women. This has systemic consequences for the quality of representation, as the preferences of the complementary groups differ. The proportionality of the electoral system influences the degree of underrepresentation: specifically, larger district magnitudes help closing the considerable gap between rich and poor.

Parliamentary sovereignty, popular sovereignty, and Henry Parker's adjudicative standpoint

Discussions of popular sovereignty in early modern England have usually been premised upon a sharp distinction between ‘legal/constitutional’ forms of discourse (which merely interpret the law) and ‘political’ ones (which focus upon the right to make it). In such readings of the period, Henry Parker has a pivotal position as a writer who abandoned merely legalistic thinking. This chapter takes a different view. It argues that Parker’s major intellectual achievement was not so much to abandon legal/constitutional discourse as to offer a theorisation of its most distinctive features: he offered an account of a new kind of politics in which concern for ‘interests’ in property and in self-preservation replaced humanist concern with promotion of virtue. Parker drew upon ideas about representation best expressed by Sir Thomas Smith and ideas about law best expressed by Oliver St John. The theory he developed was not intended as a justification of legislative sovereignty, but of adjudicative supremacy. His picture of the two Houses as supreme adjudicators was meant to block the path to direct democracy. But the adjudicative standpoint they came to occupy presupposed that freeborn adults had ‘interests’ in life, liberty, and possessions. This had democratising implications.

Mind the gap: Do proportional electoral systems foster a more equal representation of women and men, poor and rich?

Female gender and low income are two markers for groups that have been historically disadvantaged within most societies. The study explores two research questions related to their political representation: (1) ‘Are parties biased towards the ideological preferences of male and rich citizens?’; and (2) ‘Does the proportionality of the electoral system moderate the degree of under-representation of women and poor citizens in the party system?’ A multilevel analysis of survey data from 24 parliamentary democracies indicates that there is some bias against those with low income and, at a much smaller rate, women. This has systemic consequences for the quality of representation, as the preferences of the complementary groups differ. The proportionality of the electoral system influences the degree of under-representation: specifically, larger district magnitudes help in closing the considerable gap between rich and poor.

Political representation in France: a crisis of democracy?

The past two decades have witnessed growing political disaffection and a widening mass/elite disjuncture in France, reflected in opinion polls, rising abstentionism, electoral volatility and fragmentation, with sustained voting against incumbent governments. Though the electoral system has preserved the duopoly of the mainstream coalitions, they have suffered loss of public confidence and swings in electoral support. Stable parliamentary majorities conceal a political landscape of assorted anti-system parties and growing support for far right and far left. The picture is paradoxical: the French express alienation from political parties yet relate positively to their political institutions; they berate national politicians but retain strong bonds with those elected locally; they appear increasingly disengaged from politics yet forms of ‘direct democracy’ are finding new vigour. While the electoral, attitudinal and systemic factors reviewed here may not signal a crisis of democracy, they point to serious problems of political representation in contemporary France.

Party Members’ Preferences and the Changing Nature of Party Representation: Does Representation Change when Parties become Mini-Republics?

Giovanni Sartori famously wrote that political parties do not need to be mini-republics, yet today parties in many parliamentary democracies are moving in this direction by giving their members direct votes over important decisions, including selecting party leaders and settling policy issues. This paper explores some of the implications of these changes. It asks whether the addition of membership rights affects the types of members who are attracted: do we find a bigger gap between the preferences of party members and of party voters in parties that are more plebiscitary, as literature on members' motivations might lead us to expect? The paper examines this question both cross-sectionally and longitudinally using opinion data from the European Social Survey and newly-available party organizational data from the Political Party Database project.

Methods of imagetic information representation

The aim of this paper is to highlight some of the methods of imagetic information representation, reviewing the literature of the area and proposing a model of methodology adapted to Brazilian museums. An elaboration of a methodology of imagetic information representation is developed based on Brazilian characteristics of information treatment in order to adapt it to museums. Finally, spreadsheets that show this methodology are presented.

The game inside the school: a representation of 5(th) graders physical education classes

Since the beginning of Physical Education entrance in the brazilin public schools, the game has been frequently used as content, and in the course of time that practice seems to be intensified. In spite of many approaches of different purposes to justify its pedagogic usefulness, the game has been used as an indiscriminate way due to the fascination that it provides to the students. The present study searches for a description and analysis of children`s (10-12 years old) attitudes behaviors in games, on Physical Education classes, inside a public school. The study was accomplished with the researcher also attending as a teacher (action research). For the accomplishment of the study 55 children were filmed in four different games, of different kinds (exposed, transformed, and spontaneous). The classes` description and analysis were focused in the attitude axis and it was defined four topics for the discussion: Conflicts, Respect of rules, Expressiveness, and Competitiveness. The relationship between the individual with the game and its culture were pointed as the main characteristics in the configuration of the ludicrous activity atmosphere. It was also possible to observe specific situations of this relationship, once the games were limited to the social games (Piaget category), in a school atmosphere where children have students roles. Due to the obtained results, the study proposes a reflexive practice in which the students notice their own attitudes and try to adapt the game to their needs and not he other way around. In this perspective, the teacher has an important mediator roll, once he will be responsible to point out the students` difficulties and promote discussions in favor to provide teamwork.

Experimental results on the nonlinear H(infinity) control via quasi-LPV representation and game theory for wheeled mobile robots

In this paper, nonlinear dynamic equations of a wheeled mobile robot are described in the state-space form where the parameters are part of the state (angular velocities of the wheels). This representation, known as quasi-linear parameter varying, is useful for control designs based on nonlinear H(infinity) approaches. Two nonlinear H(infinity) controllers that guarantee induced L(2)-norm, between input (disturbances) and output signals, bounded by an attenuation level gamma, are used to control a wheeled mobile robot. These controllers are solved via linear matrix inequalities and algebraic Riccati equation. Experimental results are presented, with a comparative study among these robust control strategies and the standard computed torque, plus proportional-derivative, controller.

A novel continuous time representation for the scheduling of pipeline systems with pumping yield rate constraints

Pipeline systems play a key role in the petroleum business. These operational systems provide connection between ports and/or oil fields and refineries (upstream), as well as between these and consumer markets (downstream). The purpose of this work is to propose a novel MINLP formulation based on a continuous time representation for the scheduling of multiproduct pipeline systems that must supply multiple consumer markets. Moreover, it also considers that the pipeline operates intermittently and that the pumping costs depend on the booster stations yield rates, which in turn may generate different flow rates. The proposed continuous time representation is compared with a previously developed discrete time representation [Rejowski, R., Jr., & Pinto, J. M. (2004). Efficient MILP formulations and valid cuts for multiproduct pipeline scheduling. Computers and Chemical Engineering, 28, 1511] in terms of solution quality and computational performance. The influence of the number of time intervals that represents the transfer operation is studied and several configurations for the booster stations are tested. Finally, the proposed formulation is applied to a larger case, in which several booster configurations with different numbers of stages are tested. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.