State ownership and corporate governance

State ownership of publicly-traded corporations remains pervasive around the world, and has been increasing in recent years. Existing literature focuses on the implications of government ownership for corporate governance and performance at the firm level. This Article, by contrast, explores the different but equally important question of whether the presence of the state as a shareholder can impose negative externalities on the corporate law regime available to the private sector. Drawing from historical experiments with government ownership in the United States, Brazil, China, and Europe, this study shows that the conflict of interest stemming from the state’s dual role as a shareholder and regulator can influence the content of corporate laws to the detriment of outside investor protection and efficiency. It thus addresses a gap in the literature on the political economy of corporate governance by incorporating the political role of the state as shareholder as another mechanism to explain the relationship between corporate ownership structures and legal investor protection. Finally, this Article explores the promise of different institutional arrangements to constrain the impact of the state’s interests as a shareholder on the corporate governance environment, and concludes by offering several policy recommendations.

The role of law and public-private collaboration in promoting innovative firms in Brazil: the case of the BNDES and the “criatec fund”

This paper presents the result of a qualitative empirical research about the “Criatec Fund”, a venture capital fund, privately managed and directed to innovative firms, that was created in 2007 by the Brazilian Development Bank (BNDES). The paper discusses the role of law in the implementation of the Criatec Fund in three different legal dimensions: structural, regulatory and contractual. Based on interviews, this paper tries to test some hypothesis previously formulated by some scholars that studied new financial policies created by the BNDES. This study explains the institutional arrangements of this seed capital policy and the role of flexible legal instruments in the execution of this peculiar type of publicprivate partnership. It also poses some questions to the “law and development agenda” based on some insights from the economic sociology of law.

Awarding damages or demanding performance? a performance-oriented approach for international investment law

This paper examines two different approaches to judicial protection of entitlements in international economic law. One of them, ‘performance-oriented’, is applied by WTO adjudicators. Performance-oriented remedies focus on inducing wrongdoers to resume compliance with the underlying substantive rules. The other, ‘reparation-oriented’, is applied overwhelmingly in international investment law. Reparation-oriented remedies aim at offsetting the injury caused to private parties by the wrongful conduct. This paper discusses the utility of performance-oriented remedies within WTO law, and assesses the possibilities for otherwise reparation-oriented investment tribunals to have recourse to these remedies. It examines a number of decisions that, it is argued, favor performance over pecuniary compensation. From the viewpoint of the state found in breach, compensation then appears as a threatened sanction for non-compliance with the performance obligations determined.

Dip financing of financially distressed companies in Brazil – the conditions provided by the brazilian bankruptcy law act as real incentives for dip lenders as in chapter 11 of the American bankruptcy code?

O objeto deste trabalho é a compreensão do financiamento de empresas em crise, mais especificamente, o financiamento concedido após o pedido de recuperação judicial, como forma de permitir que a empresa saia da situação de crise e retorne à condição de normalidade. Para tanto, nos apropriando do termo cunhado pela doutrina norte-americana, para fazer referência ao aporte de recursos em empresas em dificuldade, utilizaremos o termo DIP financing ou financiamento DIP. Para uma compreensão adequada do objeto, é necessário que entendamos a origem do DIP financing nos Estados Unidos e como é a regulação norte-americana sobre a matéria atualmente. O segundo passo será avaliar a possibilidade de aplicação da mesma estrutura de aporte de recursos no Brasil. Ao estudarmos a origem desse mecanismo nos Estados Unidos, veremos os problemas que surgiram ao longo dos anos e como foram superados jurisprudencialmente e doutrinariamente para que o financiamento DIP se consolidasse como uma das formas de aporte de capital em empresas em crise, culminando no desenvolvimento de uma verdadeira indústria de crédito às empresas em dificuldade. Uma análise dos problemas enfrentados pelo sistema falimentar americano nos levará a hipótese de que, a menos que sejam afirmados mecanismos que assegurem a quem concede o financiamento após o pedido de recuperação judicial, uma super prioridade no recebimento após a recuperação judicial, será possível o desenvolvimento de um mercado de DIP financing no Brasil.

Estado, estado-nação e formas de intermediação social

This paper, first, situates the nation-state historically, as a product of the capitalist revolution. Second, it distinguishes the state (the law system and the organization that guarantees it) from the nation-state or country (the territorial political unit formed by a nation, a state and a territory). Third, it defines nation, civil society and class coalitions, understanding that they are forms of society politically organized, which role is to act as intermediary between society and the state. Fourth, it uses these concepts plus the ones of relative autonomy and of anteriority to understand the ever changing relation between the state and society, where in early moments the state or its elites assumed the lead, and later, as democratization takes place, the protagonist role changed gradually to the people. The paper emphasizes the class coalitions, and argues that behind the two basic forms or economic and political organization of capitalism – developmentalism and economic liberalism – there are the correspondent class coalitions

A corretagem de imóveis no Rio Grande do Norte: das práticas históricas à emergência como segmento integrante da fração imobiliária do capital

This research proposed to question the development of what was defined as historical practices (commercial, social and political institutions), of the economic activity of the real estate brokerage in the Rio Grande do Norte from the progressive institutionalization of economic agents - individuals (realtors) and legal (real estate) - based on two main approaches: a) the development of economic activity as an integral segment of a fraction of capital (POULANTZAs, 1985; LESSA, 1981). This work set out from a socio-historical approach of the historical practices development the of real estate brokerage in Brazil started in the Southeast, especially in the cities of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo as a result of the "expansion of capitalist relations by the housing sector" (RIBEIRO , 1996). especially the real estate capital ; b) the historical development of relations between labor and capital within the activity, in other words, the development of the relationship between realtors and Real Estate in relation to "group of interests" and their "collective actions" (OFFE, 1984). These historical practices are defined in this research as: 1) mercantile practices, times when there was no distinction between the activity of real estate brokerage and other forms of mercantile capital; 2) social practices, which began in the 1930s, when agents of real estate are to be distinguished from each other within the activity through Taylorist division of labor between workers realtors and developers of real estate; 3) political and institutional practices, initiated in 1962, characterized by State action, in the individualization and distinction of the agents of real estate brokerage as socioprofessional category regulated throughout Brazil by Law 4.116/62 and 6.530/78. The results achieved by the present study showed that in Rio Grande do Norte, due to the specifics as to the peripheral processes of urbanization of the constitution of the land market, as well as the process of conservative modernization of the oligarchic State from the 1960s (CLEMENTINE, 1995; FERREIRA, 1996, 2010, TRINDADE, 2004), the State was led to the development of a late manifestation of the historical practices of real estate brokerage. In other words, it was a process in which historical practices, in particular social practices, not fully developed, mitigating, thus the perception of realtors from his position in the process of exploitation of labor by the Real Estate. And, as a result, of their collective interests front of them.

Política de assistência social no Brasil: uma análise a partir das tipologias de políticas públicas

The study of public policy typologies is still a knowledge field which lacks more embracing and applicable studies to different sectors. On that perspective, this work, Social Assistance Policy in Brazil: an analysis from the typologies on public policy, pursues to add the relevant literature to social assistance what focus on the public policy ratings. Moreover, it concerns about a study on the the national policy of social assistance implemented by the Brazilian government from the theoretical referrence of the public policy typologies. For that reason, the referential framework of the public policies as well as the analisys of its fundamentals/principles that are indispensable for achieving a bigger goal, that is to tipify the social assistance policy based on the different public policy typologies and characterize it through the main elements which are intrinsec to the social political and economic reality of Brazil. Thus, the issue suggested for the work is: what is the profile and the political trajectory of the social assistance implemented by the Brazilian Government? How it presents, above all, the features of a distributive, focused and lawful policy, the work has been done througho the following hypothesis: the social assistance policy in Brazil has been of universal, assistance, and focusing aspects. For each of those features granted to the social assistance policy, there is a gathering of changes according to the social, political and economic moment of the country and that stands out due to the different institutions within every cyclical period. The work showed that besides the social policy has gone through meaningful changes during the last decades, even though the adoption of the Organic Law of Social Assistance and its rules, some of the mentioned characteristics still remain, as long as the State s primacy goes on being the economic policies over the dubbed social policies. Notwithstanding, the social assistance will build up itself from the materialization of the growing of the social rights related to the State, but also assuming an important role on the amplified reproducing process regarding the capitalist social relations

A eficácia, no ordenamento jurídico brasileiro, da responsabilização penal da pessoa jurídica pela prática de crimes ambientais

The environment, which fundamental importance has already been recognized in all the world, is an actual national and international discussion subject, whose interest grows for the society, and consequently to the Law, in order to prevent the natural resources to the present and future generations. The 1988 Brazilian Constitution, recognizing the importance of the environment, treated about it in many of its parts, even dedicating a specific chapter (Chapter V About Environment, inserted in Title VIII About Social Order). The brazilian constitutional text established to everyone the fundamental right of enjoying an equilibrated environment, obligating the State and all society to defend and preserve the environment to the present and future generations. The economic growing process, that predominated and still persist in the big majority of the countries, where is practiced the capitalist system, has in the enterprises (legal persons) one of its main actors. Many times, these enterprises, especially in the actual globalized world in where we live, where the gain of money is priorized, ends, at the moment they act, making damages to the environment. These damages are, many times, considered by the law. crimes against the environment. The 1988 Brazilian Constitution, according to the Modern Criminal Law, realizing that many crimes were being committed by the enterprises, established in article 225, §3rd, the criminal responsibility of the legal persons. Almost ten years after the 1988 Brazilian Constitution, was published the Law number 9.605/98, in which third article established the penal responsibility of the legal persons that practice crimes against the environment, without excluding the individual responsibility

O Serviço Social nas operadoras de planos privados de assistência à saúde: demandas, atribuições e respostas profissionais

The present study deals with the exercise of professional social workers in private health care plans registered with the Regional Council of Medicine/RN, in the city of Natal/RN, with regards to the demands/tasks, work conditions, and the professional response, given the climate of restructuring the capital. The set of socio-historical transformations, as a results of the dynamic capitalist, is a process of new configurations in relation to state and society that interfere directly in relation to working conditions, social rights historically won by workers. In this context, the operator of health plans arises as a possibilities to provide services in health, through the logic of the market, in which the subjects of law, become consumers contributing to the displacement of the responsibilities of the State. Obligating workers to lessen the burden with the reproduction of their workforce. This involves changing societal context for social service, since it is one of the professions that are active in terms of the immediate social issue, and come as part of the collective worker. From qualitative research based on a theoretical and methodological perspective and critical dialectics, it was possible to unveil some features and trends of the exercise of(a) social operators in private health care plans. The survey results indicated that : a) the demands and duties for certain social service, are associated with the redevelopment of the capital, whose requirements and responsibilities professionals have with their needs, particularly the guarantee of profit, services rendered; b) in the conditions of work there is a trend of insecurity uncertainty and dismantling of professionals; c) the answers professionals suffer the limits and contradictions present in the daily training, mainly depending one the characteristics of management and operation of the operators, which has professional relative autonomy

Programa Liberdade assistida em Natal/RN: adolescentes em conflito com a lei e a violação de direitos

This work shows the results of the research: Attended Liberty Program Adolescents in Conflict with the Law and the Disapproval of Rights, effected in the community of Natal, Rio Grande do Norte, in period of august 2007 to September 2008. It aims to analyze the social-educative attendance directed to adolescents in conflict with the law through the state, since the Social-educative Measure Attended Liberty, known, as an idoneous way of confrontation to the practice of infraction acts imputed to the adolescent, that needs to give emphasis, in disadvantage of the Social-educative Measurement of Internment, to be proposed (ECA, art 118 and 199) to follow the adolescent in this quotidian, close to his family and community, proposing him through social-educative work, the access to education and occupancy, as well other public services, that help him to surpass the context of privation and disapproval of rights in which lives joined to his family. In our study, it was observed in sequence of approaching, subsidized for theoretical-methodological procedures justified in quantity and quality research, that were privileged to the documental research, the observation and the interview almost structured, besides a theoretical basis about the subject, that the relation of category and inequality in which the capitalist society sustains itself, does the practice of infraction acts imputed to the adolescent, acquires a classist character, in which the property of the money defines the access of the justice. And more, many of the poor adolescents that get into conflict with the law, dweller of the periphery districts of Natal/RN, becomes evident as for segment that has been attended in the Jurisdiction of the Infancy and Youth and in the LAN of Social-educative Attendance, becoming individual the infraction act and its confrontation. We hope in this work, to contribute for the care of the reality of the adolescent in conflict with the law in the Attended Liberty Program, without pretension to exhaust it, as well as later studies about the theme

Serviço Social Audit Saúde no SUS/RN: projeto ético político profissional e de reforma sanitária

Health policies in Brazil, the decentralization of SUS management responsibilities for the three spheres of government has driven the creation and regulation of the audits of health services in the National Audit Office, this is a trend of neoliberal policies imposed by international bodies like the World Bank and IMF to peripheral countries characterized by productive restructuring and reforming the state focuses on the presence of two competing projects in the area of health: Health Sector Reform Project which is based on the democratic rule of law with the assumption of health as social right and duty of the State in defending the extension of the conquest of rights and democratization of access to health care guaranteed through the public financing strategies and the effective decentralization of decisions pervaded by social control and privatized Health Project which is based on the state minimum, with a reduction in social spending or in partnerships and privatization, stronger nonprofit sector, subject to capitalist interests, is made effective through strategies targeting health policy and refilantropização actions. In this context, the present study is an analysis on the work of social audits of public health in infants from a qualitative and quantitative approach, embodied by the critical method of dialectical Marxist social theory that enabled us to unveil the characterization, the demands, challenges and outline the profile of Social Work in teams inserted audits of SUS in RN, but also provided evidence to demonstrate the prospects and possibilities of this area of activity of social workers. It was also found that through the audit work that the state fulfill its role as bureaucratic and regulator of health services with efficiency, effectiveness and economy. Yet, paradoxically, the audits of SUS may provide a vehicle for enforcing rights and ensuring the fundamental principles contained in the project of health reform, because it can be configured in a space of political struggle as representing a new field of knowledge production that needs to be appropriate for a theoretical critic able to redirect the social interests in favor of the user. From this perspective, it is concluded that the work of social audits of public health in infants despite the social relevance that prints, as they constitute an activity study of reality and its transformation proposition requires a transformative political action guided the discussion Marxist theory holds that the ethical project professional politician of Social Work

Violência e luta por direitos no capitalismo contemporâneo: crítica à configuração do atendimento às mulheres no Rio Grande do Norte

This research analyzes the Rio Grande do Norte care services to women who face violence in the context of contemporary capitalism. To do so, we situate the patriarchy in the set of current social relations and its relationship with the corporate determinations in everyday life. The new functions of the Patriarchy in the capital sociability permeates the lives of individuals and particularizes the relationships of violence which affects women, requiring, in the immediate level, policy-making to face them. The research found an arsenal of contradictory possibilities and limitations in dealing with violence. In this process, forms of struggle and resistance predominate, which appear as possibilities and limits were identified relate to the socio-historical context of regression of the rights, historical moment in which increase the objective difficulties in everyday life to ensure the legal achievements. It is worth to emphasize the achievements and contradictions that characterize the struggle process for rights, linking services to women to the social policies and to the limits they face in opposition to the aims of the State to meet the mandatory requirements of capital, reducing its role as the main guarantor of policies and rights. In this sense, the trajectory of the achievements that have referred to the proclamation of a specific law to deal with combat violence against women, the Maria da Penha Law - 11.340/06, which provides an integrated set of measures that, if implemented, would allow the women protection from relations of violence they experience. We identified in Rio Grande do Norte precarious services that are essential to achieve the Maria da Penha Law. This situation requires a feminist organization to claim the rights that enable women to see themselves as people with rights in the process of collective struggle. This is the historical need for continuity of struggles that accumulate policies for the existence of a new model of social relations of gender. One of the possibilities that are presented in the current context is the impact on the public budget in order to ensure compliance with the budget for public policies for women - woman budget. In this perspective, feminist segments in national and state level have been organized to understand the functioning and monitoring of social policies. This is a condition and prerequisite for ensuring policies to ensure basic rights and the violence combat , which still requires an integrated set of services. The survey results allow us to consider that the struggle for rights is necessary at this historical moment, however it is not sufficient in human emancipation, which requires new forms of social relations that determine substantive equality between men and women. Thus, the feminist movement faces the challenge to organize and strengthen itself in daily life, in order to execute a project that changes the meaning of women's rights, articulated to a corporate project which wants other command in the set of social relations . This study emphasizes the need for a more and more organic connection between feminism and social struggles, to ensure the inclusion of women in anti-capitalist struggle

Metal fluxes at the sediment-water interface in rivers in the Turvo/Grande drainage basin, So Paulo State, Brazil

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

Dressed-state approach to a simple radiating atom

We consider a system consisting of an atom in the dipole approximation, coupled to the electromagnetic field. Using recently introduced renormalized coordinates and dressed states, we give a non-perturbative solution to the atom radiation process. From this formalism a non-exponential decay law naturally emerges. However, at least for low frequencies and weak coupling, there is only a very small, practically non-detectable, deviation from a purely exponential decay, in agreement with all previous results in the literature. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Ferroelectric state analysis in grain boundary of Na0.85Li0.15NbO3 ceramic

The electric and dielectric properties of the grain boundary of Na0.85Li0.15NbO3 lead-free ferroelectric-semiconductor perovskite were investigated. The impedance spectroscopy was carried out as a function of a thermal cycle. The sodium lithium niobate was synthesized by a chemical route based on the evaporation method. Dense ceramic, relative density of 97%, was prepared at 1423 K for 2 h in air atmosphere. ac measurements were carried out in the frequency range of 5 Hz-13 MHz and from 673 to 1023 K. Theoretical adjust of the impedance data was performed to deriving the electric parameters of the grain boundary. The electric conductivity follows the Arrhenius law, with activation energy values equal to 1.55 and 1.54 eV for heating and cooling cycle, respectively. The nonferroelectric state of the grain boundary and its correlation with symmetry are discussed in the temperature domain. (C) 2003 American Institute of Physics.