Colloquium: Thirty Years of Re-Democratization in Brazil

April 23, 2015 - 10:00 am

Room 9204 (The Graduate Center, CUNY)

’30 Years of Corruption in Brazil – A Never-Ending Story’
David Fleischer, University of Brasília and Visiting Professor at the Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University

‘Opening the Black Box: Three Decades of Reforms to Brazil’s Judicial System’
Matthew Taylor, American University and Visiting Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center

‘What Color Is the State? Mapping State Capacity in Democratic Brazil’
Jorge Alves, Queens College, CUNY

‘Development and Infrastructure’
Mauricio Font, Bildner Center, CUNY

‘The more the better? Impact of legislature size on walfare?’
Umberto Mignozzetti, Ph.D. Student

Gabriel Cepaluni, UNESP, Brazil and Visiting Fellow at NYU

Schedule

10:00-10:10 Mauricio
10:10-10:45 Matthew
10:45-11:20 David
11:20-11:35 Q&A

11:35-11:45 break

11:45-12:20 Jorge
12:20-12:55 Umberto
12:55-1:30 Mauricio
1:30-2:00 Q&A

1:25-2:00 roundtable

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).

Matthew Taylor (Ph.D., Georgetown University) is the author of Judging Policy: Courts and Policy Reform in Democratic Brazil (Stanford University Press, 2008), which was awarded the Brazilian Political Science Association’s Victor Nunes Leal Prize for best book, co-editor with Timothy J. Power of Corruption and Democracy in Brazil: The Struggle for Accountability (University of Notre Dame Press, 2011), and co-editor, with Oliver Stuenkel, of Brazil on the Global Stage: Power, Ideas, and the Liberal International Order (Palgrave, 2015). His scholarly work has been published in a variety of journals, including Comparative Politics, Journal of Latin American Studies, Latin American Politics & Society and World Politics. Professor Taylor’s research and teaching interests include state capacity, corruption, judicial politics, and Latin American political economy. He has lived and worked extensively in Brazil, most recently as a member of the faculty at the University of São Paulo, from 2006 to 2011.

Jorge Alves (Ph.D., Brown University) is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Queens College, CUNY . He specializes in comparative politics, specifically on issues of federalism, intergovernmental relations, state capacity construction and the political economy of development, with a regional focus on Latin America and Brazil. He is currently working two research projects: The effect of local configurations of political competition on the construction of subnational healthcare institutions (the subject of his dissertation), and the politics behind public transparency advances.

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 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), and Reforming Brazil (Lexington Books/Bildner Western Hemisphere Series, 2004).

Umberto Mignozzetti is PhD Candidate at NYU. His main interests are in Comparative Politics, Comparative Political Economy, and Comparative Politics of Developing Economies