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This paper discusses two recent speeches by President Obama and the two different types of changes they introduce, identifying the decision processes they reflect. The first speech implies a move away from the continuity of the security policy adopted by the previous administration, embodied by the Authorization to Use Military Force, announcing changes of the global strategy in the fight against terrorism, a greater judicial and political control on the use of drones and asking Congress to review the legal obstacles it created to the closure of Guantanamo. The second speech appears to invert the promises of the non-interventionist stance adopted by this administration, announcing the intention to use military force to punish the government of Syria for its repeated use of chemical weapons, without a United Nations mandate. Adapted from the source document.

Bankruptcy law is an important economic institution because of its effects on credit and, consequently, on financial and economic development. This fact has led several countries to revise their law. This article presents an overview on the topic focusing in Brazil. Its main points are: credit in Brazil is not compatible with the country level of development; there is evidence that Brazil is among the countries where legal protection to creditors is worst; the international experience shows that changes in the bankruptcy law affects the market for credit; and the Brazilian law is extremely outdated. (Rev Econ Polit/DÜI)

The Brazilian federal judiciary offers an interesting riddle to scholars of judicial politics and policy change. While the courts have played a major policy role over the past two decades, constraining and altering federal policy across a range of subjects, the court system has simultaneously been labeled "dysfunctional." This paper investigates this riddle: a system plagued by major systemic flaws in its day-to-day operations, which nonetheless still manages to exert a powerful influence on public policy in Brazil. The author adopts a new institutional perspective, focusing on how the institutional and normative structure within which judges and other legal actors operate affects policy outcomes. (Rev Econ Polit/GIGA)

In this article, we will undertake a reflection on the analytics of power in Michel Foucault. Our intention is to cover Foucault's production from the mid-seventies to the beginning of the eighties, seeking to understand the shifts or "twists and turns" through which the concept of power has suffered over time. We will try to show that it is possible to identify three moments in Foucault's research. First, when trying to move away from the traditional legal-discursive understanding of power, he introduces an unprecedented analysis of the dynamics of disciplinary power and the micro-powers that make up the social field. This can be considered a shift, in general, in relation to the western political tradition. With the course society must be defended we are faced with a change in the understanding of power when identifying it as war or struggle. Finally, with the introduction of the concepts of biopower/ biopolitics, Foucault is led to a great expansion of his research, focusing on concepts that were not part of his interest until then, such as, for example, the concept of State. It is in this context that the concept of government will enter Foucault's reflections. We understand that the concept of government is a refinement and, likewise, makes its analysis of power broader and more complex in order to account for the political present.