Brazilian Democracy: Crisis and Prospects

May 25, 2016 - 3:30 pm

Room C201 (The Graduate Center, CUNY)

This Bildner Center panel explores Brazilian democracy in the light of the impeachement process and the installation of a new government.

“Reflections on Brazil’s Political Crisis and Democracy”
Maria Hermínia Tavares de Almeida, Centro Brasileiro de Analise e Planejamento-CEBRAP

“Brazilian Democracy on Trial: The Impeachment Precess and the Michel Temer Presidency”
David Fleischer, University of Brasilia

Comments:
Mauricio Font, Queens College and the Graduate Center, CUNY

Moderator:
Ken Erickson, Hunter College and the Graduate Center, CUNY

Maria Hermínia Tavares de Almeida (Ph.D., University of São Paulo) is senior researcher at Centro Brasileiro de Análise e Planejamento (CEBRAP) and Professor at the University of São Paulo (retired) teaching at the Graduate Programs of International Relations and of Political Science. At USP has been dean of the Institute of International Relations. She did post-doctoral studies at the University of California, Berkeley (1984). As a political scientist, she conducted research on public policies and Brazilian political institutions, and more recently on public opinion and foreign policy in Brazil. Her publications include Economic Crisis and Organized Interests (Edusp, 1993) with Gian Luca Gardini, Foreign Policy Responses to the Rise of Brazil: Balancing Power in Emerging States (Palgrave-McMillan, 2016) and over a hundred articles in academic journals and books. She has served as member of the Latin American Studies Association’s Executive Committee (2001-2004), of the International Political Science Association’s Executive Committee (2006-2009), as President of the Brazilian Political Science Association (2004-2008) and as President of the Latin American Studies Association- LASA (2010-2012). She is currently member of the World Bank Chief Economist´s Council of Eminent Persons, of the Brazil Institute`s Advisory Council and the Latin American Program’s Advisory Council at the Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars, and of the Academic Council of the European Union–Latin America and the Caribbean Foundation (EU-LAC Foundation). She holds the National Order of Scientific Merit (2006) and received the Academic Excellence Award in Political Science granted by the Social Sciences Graduate Programs Association-ANPOCS, Brazil (2013)

David Fleischer (Ph.D. University of Florida) serves on the advisory board of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation in Brazil as well as on the board of the Brazil Studies Program at Harvard University. In 1972 he joined the faculty of the University of Brasília (UnB), where he was Chair of the Department of Political Science and International Relations (1985-1989) and member of the University Council (1985-1993). He was Director of the School of Social and Political Science at UniDF – Centro Universitário do Distrito Federal. Fleischer has published widely on Brazilian politics (Congress, elections, political parties, and political corruption), and North-South Relations. His publications are: “Government and Politics” in Brazil: A Country Study (1998); Corruption in Brazil (2002); “Political Reforms: Cardoso’s Missing Link” in Reforming Brazil (2004); “Brazil: From Military Regime to a Workers’ Party Government” in Latin America: Its Problems and its Promises (2010); “Brazil” in Freedom House, Countries at the Crossroads – An Analysis of Democratic Governance (2010); and “Political Reform: A Never-Ending Story” in The Brazilian State: Debate and Agenda (2011).

Kenneth Erickson (Ph.D., Columbia University) is co-editor-in-chief of Comparative Politics and serves on the Executive Board of the New England Council on Latin American Studies. His research interests are Latin America, social movements, drug and environmental policy. Among his publications are: with D.A. Rustow Global Research Perspectives: Paradigms, Concepts and Data in a Changing World (Comparative Political Dynamics: Global Research Perspectives. Harper Collins, 1991), Brazil: Corporatism, Democratization, and Dependency ( Latin American Politics and Development . Eds. H. J. Wiarda and H. Kline. 1985).

Mauricio Font (Ph.D. University of Michigan) is director of the Bildner Center for Western Hemisphere Studies and Professor of Sociology at the Graduate Center and Queens College, City University of New York. Font’s most recent publication is The State and the Private Sector in Latin America (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). His publications on Brazil include Coffee and Transformation in São Paulo, Brazil (Lexington Books, 2010), Transforming Brazil: A Reform Era in Perspective (Rowman & Littlefield, 2003), The Brazilian State: Debate and Agenda (Lexington Books 2011), Reforming Brazil (Lexington Books/Bildner Western Hemisphere Series, 2004), and Charting a New Course: The Politics of Globalization and Social Transformation (Rowman & Littlefield, 2001).