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"Students who enroll in an introductory course on comparative politics should be prepared to encounter some tough but fascinating questions: Why are some states democracies while others are not? Why does ethnicity seem to be at the heart of so much conflict in the world today?"--

Follows the efforts of a homeless itinerant who assumed a false identity and was admitted to Princeton University, an endeavor during which he dated a millionaire's daughter, achieved top grades, and gained entry into the elite Ivy Club before his deception was exposed

In the US House of Representatives, members seek to win repeated reelection whereas politicians in Brazil see the national legislature as a stepping-stone to 'higher' office, in state and local government. This book contributes to the literature on the importance of federalism and subnational politics to understanding national-level politics worldwide

AbstractThis article quantifies books' impact in terms of citation counts—in published articles and in other published books. The average political science book published by a university press receives about three times the number of citations received by an article indexed in the SSCI. Books' impact varies by subfield, with books published in methodology receiving many more citations on average than books published in other subfields, followed by books in international relations. Overall, books published on American politics are cited least frequently. Results suggest that political scientists should supplement quantitative indicators of article and journal impact (which are based only on citations in peer-reviewed articles) with similar measures that account for the scholarly influence of published books.

Com base no ESEB 2002 e no LAPOP 2007, o artigo analisa a evolução das bases do apoio de massa ao Partido dos Trabalhadores desde que Lula chegou ao poder em 2002. Historicamente, só o PT tem sido capaz de construir e manter uma ampla base de "identificados" com o partido entre os eleitores brasileiros. Mas, desde 2002, o PT tornou-se mais moderado e muito menos preocupado com os princípios ideológicos e partidários de seus anos iniciais e o artigo investiga o impacto da moderação da liderança do PT sobre os petistas. Os resultados sugerem que houve poucas mudanças nas bases do petismo: uma leve moderação e uma pequena mudança no perfil socioeconômico. Indicam também que o sentimento com relação à corrupção permanece sem importância como determinante do petismo.

AbstractScholars believe that mass partisanship in Brazil is comparatively weak. Using evidence from a 2002 national survey, however, this study finds that the aggregate level of party identification actually falls only slightly below the world average and exceeds levels found in many newer democracies. Yet this finding is misleading, because the distribution of partisanship is skewed toward only one party, the PT. This trend results from a combination of party organization and recruitment efforts and individual motivation to acquire knowledge and become involved in politicized social networks. Partisanship for other parties, however, derives substantially from personalistic attachments to party leaders. This finding has implications for current debates about the status of parties in Brazil. Also important is the impact of the 2005 corruption scandal implicating the PT and President Lula da Silva's administration.

Luis Inácio Lula da Silva's victory in Brazil's 2002 presidential election brought to power Latin America's largest leftist party, the Workers'Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores [PT]). The PTwon because it moved to the center, and voters regarded this shift as credible. The party's transformation is puzzling, because political scientists do not expect strategic flexibility in "mass bureaucratic" parties, which the PT resembles. Although exogenous factors are important, the key to understanding the party's strategic adaptation lies with its internal institutions, which generate substantial leadership accountability. The weight of pragmatists in the rank and file grew in the 1990s following the party's success in subnational executive elections and its consequent need to demonstrate results in office. These rank-and-file members could influence the party's direction because of the party's internally democratic institutions. The PT's transformation reveals that strategic flexibility can emerge in mass parties even when the leadership lacks autonomy.

A partir dos dados do ESEB de 2002 o autor realiza um estudo das bases eleitorais do PT e de hipóteses sobre a natureza do petismo. Através de técnicas estatísticas multivariadas, são testadas relações do petismo com variáveis demográficas, socioeconômicas e variáveis relativas a questões políticas específicas. Os resultados apontam que apenas a escolaridade tem uma associação específica com o petismo, com implicações para o seu comportamento sócio-político.

To what extent do the institutions of presidentialism allow voters to hold governments accountable? Powell and Whitten (1993) suggested that voter capacity to sanction is strong when "clarity of government responsibility" for outcomes is clear, and vice versa. I argue that clarity of responsibility functions differently under presidentialism and that presidentialism generates particular forms of accountability. In general, electoral sanctioning is weak in nonconcurrent elections, which do not occur under parliamentarism, but is stronger in concurrent elections. In concurrentexecutiveelections the clarity of responsibility does not attenuate the economy's impact on the vote. Yet in concurrentlegislativeelections both partisan and institutional variables diffuse responsibility for economic performance. Thus under many common institutional and partisan formats, voters sanction presidents to a greater degree than legislators for the same phenomenon. These findings elucidate the conditions under which we might observe accountability similar to what we find in some parliamentary systems or a more uniquely presidentialist "dual democratic legitimacies" of the kind Linz (1994) imagined.