A UNESCO e a governança ambiental na bacia amazônica

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

A temática financeira na agenda da política externa do governo Lula: o BNDES e o modelo de participação e exposição financeira do Brasil na América do Sul

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

O padrão de atuação das empresas de segurança privada: o caso de Angola

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

A dimensão estratégica da política externa dos Estados Unidos no Caribe: (1898-1904)

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

Cooperação internacional e meio ambiente: os programas da USAID no Brasil

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

Criador e criatura: os Estados Unidos e a Organização Mundial do Comércio (OMC)

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

The Caribbean and the post-2015 development agenda

This paper will contend that the post-2015 development agenda presents a major opportunity for Caribbean countries to reverse decades of lagging economic performance and make the transition to balanced, holistic, and people-centred growth and development. The MDGs, while valuable in promoting gains in poverty reduction, health, education, nutrition, and maternal well-being were not tailored to the growth and development needs of the region. This can now be changed by a post-2015 development agenda which goes beyond improving the welfare of citizens by meeting basic needs and enhancing access to primary services. The necessary scaling-up of the MDG framework will require that the sustainable development goals, which will anchor the post- 2015 development agenda, are capable of promoting structural change, competitiveness and output gains while advancing social development and meeting environmental concerns. They must also address the unfinished business of the millennium development goals, primarily in the area of human development.

Opportunities and risks associated with the advent of digital currency in the Caribbean

This report examines the usage of digital currency technology in the Caribbean subregion with a view to drawing attention to the opportunities and risks associated with this new phenomenon. It discusses the broader context of an emerging activity at the global level and considers how this technology could address subregional deficiencies in the electronic payment infrastructure. The report also discusses mobile money solutions, and the relationship of that technology to digital currency.

Regional approaches to e-government initiatives in the Caribbean

This paper examines the potential benefits and challenges of regionally managed e-government development initiatives. It examines the current state of e-government in four Caribbean countries – Barbados, Jamaica, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and Trinidad and Tobago – in order to establish a broader understanding of the challenges that face e-government initiatives in the region. It also reviews a number of e-government initiatives that have been undertaken through projects managed at a regional level. Based on this analysis, it presents a set of best practices that are recommended to agencies engaged in the task of coordinating the implementation of regionally-based e-government initiatives.

Ciclo de política curricular do estado do Pará (2008-2012): a enunciação discursiva sobre relações “raciais”

O presente estudo analisa os enunciados discursivos do ciclo de Política curricular do Estado do Pará sobre as relações “raciais” no período de 2008 a 2012, a partir da abordagem do ciclo de políticas, proposto por Stephen Ball. Nesta análise, é focalizada a produção das políticas no contexto de influência, contexto de produção de textos políticos e contexto da prática. O referencial teórico-metodológico que subsidia a análise parte da Teoria sócio-histórica e dialógica da linguagem com base em Bakhtin (2010, 2011), abordagem do ciclo de políticas abalizado pelas teorizações de Ball et al (1992), para os estudos acerca Relações “Raciais” partimos dos conceitos de Guimarães (1999, 2002, 2008) e Coelho (2009) sobre raça. E, sobre as relações sociais estabelecidas no campo educacional, utilizamos as noções conceituais de campo e de habitus em Bourdieu (2008, 2009, 2010). O estudo é de abordagem qualitativa (FLICK, 2004). Utilizamos como fontes de coleta de dados documentos orais e escritos, dentre os quais destacamos: Artigos, Teses e Dissertações sobre Relações “Raciais” e Política Curricular realizado em duas bases de dados nacionais e uma internacional: a) ANPED (GT-21); b) site da CAPES/PPGE; c) Fundação Ford. Publicações: a) Política de Educação Básica do Estado do Pará, especialmente o eixo da Política Curricular; b) I Conferência Estadual de Educação: Diagnósticos, diretrizes, objetivos e metas aprovadas; c) Educação Básica no Pará: elementos para uma política educacional democrática e de qualidade Pará todos (vol I e II) e entrevista semiestruturada com quatorze agentes sociais que atuavam na SEDUC, USE e escolas da Rede Pública Estadual, os quais participaram da Política Curricular do Estado do Pará. Os dados foram analisados por meio da análise do processo enunciativo-discursivo com base em Bakhtin (2010, 2011). A partir da análise da enunciação discursiva do ciclo de política curricular do Estado do Pará sobre as relações “raciais” e da interpenetração dos discursos entre os contextos de influência, contexto de definição de textos políticos e contexto da prática os resultados do estudo revelam que os diferentes enunciados produzidos nos variados contextos são marcados pela hibridização de discursos, resultado de processos de recontextualização. Infere-se que a política curricular do Estado do Pará se apresenta em inter-relações entre múltiplos contextos no ciclo de políticas (BALL, et al, 1992). A despeito do caráter contínuo e não hierarquizado das políticas, da articulação macro e micropolíticas avançarem em relação às abordagens estadocêntricas e do processo de recontextualização política que ocorre no contexto da prática, o estudo conclui que a política curricular do Estado do Pará existe como uma política de Estado, existe como uma política educacional. No entanto, na exequibilidade dessa política de Estado e educacional na escola no tocante as relações “raciais”, ela não ocorre por conta da fragilização da competência cultural e teórica desse agente social que deve executá-la. A fragilização está na concretização dessa política no contexto da prática. Há um problema entre o que se projeta e o que se prática, o que ajuda a atribuir a realidade social a disseminação e ratificação do racismo e discriminação nos diferentes contextos que compõe a política de currículo.

Areves notas sobre a recepção das ideias maquiavelianas no pensamento militar e na teoria das relações internacionais

This text aims to present a very short review on Machiavelli’s ideas reception concerning his military thought and short reflections on international affairs, as part of what was called realism in the realm of international relations theory. The text deals with much more emphasis the mentioned interpretations in a very concise way within contemporary studies about maquiavelian legacy on contemporary studies in International Relations.

Essays on the political economy of European integration

Recently, a rising interest in political and economic integration/disintegration issues has been developed in the political economy field. This growing strand of literature partly draws on traditional issues of fiscal federalism and optimum public good provision and focuses on a trade-off between the benefits of centralization, arising from economies of scale or externalities, and the costs of harmonizing policies as a consequence of the increased heterogeneity of individual preferences in an international union or in a country composed of at least two regions. This thesis stems from this strand of literature and aims to shed some light on two highly relevant aspects of the political economy of European integration. The first concerns the role of public opinion in the integration process; more precisely, how economic benefits and costs of integration shape citizens' support for European Union (EU) membership. The second is the allocation of policy competences among different levels of government: European, national and regional. Chapter 1 introduces the topics developed in this thesis by reviewing the main recent theoretical developments in the political economy analysis of integration processes. It is structured as follows. First, it briefly surveys a few relevant articles on economic theories of integration and disintegration processes (Alesina and Spolaore 1997, Bolton and Roland 1997, Alesina et al. 2000, Casella and Feinstein 2002) and discusses their relevance for the study of the impact of economic benefits and costs on public opinion attitude towards the EU. Subsequently, it explores the links existing between such political economy literature and theories of fiscal federalism, especially with regard to normative considerations concerning the optimal allocation of competences in a union. Chapter 2 firstly proposes a model of citizens’ support for membership of international unions, with explicit reference to the EU; subsequently it tests the model on a panel of EU countries. What are the factors that influence public opinion support for the European Union (EU)? In international relations theory, the idea that citizens' support for the EU depends on material benefits deriving from integration, i.e. whether European integration makes individuals economically better off (utilitarian support), has been common since the 1970s, but has never been the subject of a formal treatment (Hix 2005). A small number of studies in the 1990s have investigated econometrically the link between national economic performance and mass support for European integration (Eichenberg and Dalton 1993; Anderson and Kalthenthaler 1996), but only making informal assumptions. The main aim of Chapter 2 is thus to propose and test our model with a view to providing a more complete and theoretically grounded picture of public support for the EU. Following theories of utilitarian support, we assume that citizens are in favour of membership if they receive economic benefits from it. To develop this idea, we propose a simple political economic model drawing on the recent economic literature on integration and disintegration processes. The basic element is the existence of a trade-off between the benefits of centralisation and the costs of harmonising policies in presence of heterogeneous preferences among countries. The approach we follow is that of the recent literature on the political economy of international unions and the unification or break-up of nations (Bolton and Roland 1997, Alesina and Wacziarg 1999, Alesina et al. 2001, 2005a, to mention only the relevant). The general perspective is that unification provides returns to scale in the provision of public goods, but reduces each member state’s ability to determine its most favoured bundle of public goods. In the simple model presented in Chapter 2, support for membership of the union is increasing in the union’s average income and in the loss of efficiency stemming from being outside the union, and decreasing in a country’s average income, while increasing heterogeneity of preferences among countries points to a reduced scope of the union. Afterwards we empirically test the model with data on the EU; more precisely, we perform an econometric analysis employing a panel of member countries over time. The second part of Chapter 2 thus tries to answer the following question: does public opinion support for the EU really depend on economic factors? The findings are broadly consistent with our theoretical expectations: the conditions of the national economy, differences in income among member states and heterogeneity of preferences shape citizens’ attitude towards their country’s membership of the EU. Consequently, this analysis offers some interesting policy implications for the present debate about ratification of the European Constitution and, more generally, about how the EU could act in order to gain more support from the European public. Citizens in many member states are called to express their opinion in national referenda, which may well end up in rejection of the Constitution, as recently happened in France and the Netherlands, triggering a European-wide political crisis. These events show that nowadays understanding public attitude towards the EU is not only of academic interest, but has a strong relevance for policy-making too. Chapter 3 empirically investigates the link between European integration and regional autonomy in Italy. Over the last few decades, the double tendency towards supranationalism and regional autonomy, which has characterised some European States, has taken a very interesting form in this country, because Italy, besides being one of the founding members of the EU, also implemented a process of decentralisation during the 1970s, further strengthened by a constitutional reform in 2001. Moreover, the issue of the allocation of competences among the EU, the Member States and the regions is now especially topical. The process leading to the drafting of European Constitution (even if then it has not come into force) has attracted much attention from a constitutional political economy perspective both on a normative and positive point of view (Breuss and Eller 2004, Mueller 2005). The Italian parliament has recently passed a new thorough constitutional reform, still to be approved by citizens in a referendum, which includes, among other things, the so called “devolution”, i.e. granting the regions exclusive competence in public health care, education and local police. Following and extending the methodology proposed in a recent influential article by Alesina et al. (2005b), which only concentrated on the EU activity (treaties, legislation, and European Court of Justice’s rulings), we develop a set of quantitative indicators measuring the intensity of the legislative activity of the Italian State, the EU and the Italian regions from 1973 to 2005 in a large number of policy categories. By doing so, we seek to answer the following broad questions. Are European and regional legislations substitutes for state laws? To what extent are the competences attributed by the European treaties or the Italian Constitution actually exerted in the various policy areas? Is their exertion consistent with the normative recommendations from the economic literature about their optimum allocation among different levels of government? The main results show that, first, there seems to be a certain substitutability between EU and national legislations (even if not a very strong one), but not between regional and national ones. Second, the EU concentrates its legislative activity mainly in international trade and agriculture, whilst social policy is where the regions and the State (which is also the main actor in foreign policy) are more active. Third, at least two levels of government (in some cases all of them) are significantly involved in the legislative activity in many sectors, even where the rationale for that is, at best, very questionable, indicating that they actually share a larger number of policy tasks than that suggested by the economic theory. It appears therefore that an excessive number of competences are actually shared among different levels of government. From an economic perspective, it may well be recommended that some competences be shared, but only when the balance between scale or spillover effects and heterogeneity of preferences suggests so. When, on the contrary, too many levels of government are involved in a certain policy area, the distinction between their different responsibilities easily becomes unnecessarily blurred. This may not only leads to a slower and inefficient policy-making process, but also risks to make it too complicate to understand for citizens, who, on the contrary, should be able to know who is really responsible for a certain policy when they vote in national,local or European elections or in referenda on national or European constitutional issues.

Feminist Tigers and Patriarchal Lions: Rhetorical Strategies and Instrument Effects in the Struggle for Definition and Control over Development in Nepal

This article offers an analysis of a struggle for control of a women’s development project in Nepal. The story of this struggle is worth telling, for it is rife with the gender politics and neo-colonial context that underscore much of what goes on in contemporary Nepal. In particular, my analysis helps to unravel some of the powerful discourses, threads of interest, and yet unintended effects inevitable under a regime of development aid. The analysis demonstrates that the employment of already available discursive figures of the imperialist feminist and the patriarchal third world man are central to the rhetorical strategies taken in the conflict. I argue that the trans-discursive or “borderland” nature of development in general and women’s development in particular result in different constructions of “development” goals, means and actors based not only on divergent cultural categories but on historically specific cultural politics. I argue further that the apolitical discourse of development serves to cloak its inherently political project of social and economic transformation, making conflicts such as the one that occurred in this case not only likely to occur but also likely to be misunderstood.

The Turkish Drawbridge: European Integration and the Cultural Economics of National Planning

This article examines the relations between the Turkish State Planning Organisation (SPO) and the Western economic system during the first two decades of national planning in Turkey (1960–1980). It traces how the SPO, established with the guidance and full endorsement of international economic institutions came to vehemently oppose Turkish participation in one of their pillars: the European Economic Community (EEC), the predecessor of the European Union. It argues that the shift in the SPO's world-view was founded upon two distinct understandings of the Turkish nation and its development, situates these understandings within the intellectual history of Turkey's past ambivalence towards the West, and, in doing so, provides a historical case-study of the ideological clash between modernisation and dependency theories of development.

Domains of physical activity and all-cause mortality: systematic review and dose-response meta-analysis of cohort studies

Background The dose–response relation between physical activity and all-cause mortality is not well defined at present. We conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis to determine the association with all-cause mortality of different domains of physical activity and of defined increases in physical activity and energy expenditure. Methods MEDLINE, Embase and the Cochrane Library were searched up to September 2010 for cohort studies examining all-cause mortality across different domains and levels of physical activity in adult general populations. We estimated combined risk ratios (RRs) associated with defined increments and recommended levels, using random-effects meta-analysis and dose–response meta-regression models. Results Data from 80 studies with 1 338 143 participants (118 121 deaths) were included. Combined RRs comparing highest with lowest activity levels were 0.65 [95% confidence interval (95% CI) 0.60–0.71] for total activity, 0.74 (95% CI 0.70–0.77) for leisure activity, 0.64 (95% CI 0.55–0.75) for activities of daily living and 0.83 (95% CI 0.71–0.97) for occupational activity. RRs per 1-h increment per week were 0.91 (95% CI 0.87–0.94) for vigorous exercise and 0.96 (95% CI 0.93–0.98) for moderate-intensity activities of daily living. RRs corresponding to 150 and 300 min/week of moderate to vigorous activity were 0.86 (95% CI 0.80–0.92) and 0.74 (95% CI 0.65–0.85), respectively. Mortality reductions were more pronounced in women. Conclusion Higher levels of total and domain-specific physical activity were associated with reduced all-cause mortality. Risk reduction per unit of time increase was largest for vigorous exercise. Moderate-intensity activities of daily living were to a lesser extent beneficial in reducing mortality.