This study evaluates whether 853 municipalities of Minas Gerais have developed one specific strategy of electronic government. We searched for municipalities that have websites for the executive branch, relating this information to a number of secondary data. These data include variables on the Municipal Human Development Index (HDI-M), municipal budgetary revenues, year of founding of municipalities, the mayor's party affiliation, and a public policy initiative related to the creation of municipal executive branch websites. This analysis was performed to develop descriptive statistics among the variables collected. In addition to exploring descriptive analysis, we attempted to determine statistical models that explain the existence of websites for municipal executives. This allowed us to determine whether municipalities that were established earlier than others, have the highest HDI-M, and have larger budgets are also more likely to have websites. The results indicate that older municipalities, as well as those with higher HDI-M and elevated budgetary revenues, are more likely to have websites. A mayor's party affiliation indicates that municipalities administered by the Workers' Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores, or PT, the center-left-wing party) are more likely to have websites than municipalities governed by the Brazilian Social Democratic Party (Partido da Social Democracia Brasileira, or PSDB, the center-right-wing party). Furthermore, municipalities that use the state government program Integraminas (Connect Minas) are less likely to have their own websites, which is an indication that these locations are using policy resources to communicate electronically with the population. Thus, newly founded municipalities with low HDI-M, with low budgetary revenue, and administered by center-right-wing parties may benefit from public policies that encourage greater transparency in the communication of municipal executives with their population.

Onipresente na obra de Gilberto Freyre, na qual recebe tratamento diversificado, o tema da culinária e da alimentação evidencia o projeto científico e o programa político do autor pernambucano, bem como seu pioneirismo e sua importância contemporânea. Buscando um esforço de síntese e a sondagem de alguns aspectos mais recônditos da obra freyreana, esse artigo pretende demonstrar que subjazem ao tratamento da culinária em Freyre os temas-chave de raça, identidade e modernidade. A relação e entre nutrição e raça sugere que argumentos baseados na alimentação foram fundamentais para sobrepor ao paradigma racista um culturalista. A relação entre alimentação e identidade evidencia que a culinária brasileira é epítome do caráter mestiço do brasileiro. A relação entre alimentação e modernidade implica que a culinária nacional há de ser defendida das forças descaracterizadoras da modernização.

Distinguimos entre a perspectiva instrumental do indivíduo sobre sua rede de relações sociais (capital social minimalista) e a perspectiva da resolução dos dilemas da ação coletiva (capital social maximalista) (Ostrom e Ahn 2003). Seguindo esta última, estudamos os mecanismos sociais que operavam dentro de um arranjo produtivo que visava substituir cultivos ilícitos de coca na Colômbia. Reconstruímos os efeitos da estrutura de incentivos sustentada por um ator externo — situação third party— e das estruturas emergentes de circulação da informação, de colaboração e de controle social lateral. Ao contrário da visada associação de agricultores, criou-se um aparelho de regulação com baixa capacidade coercitiva e sob os critérios do agente externo. A politização do processo e a disposição espacial da produção geraram um perfil dual nas redes intra organizacionais: centralização burocrática e descentralização técnica da informação, de baixa e alta densidade de colaboração, e de autoridade vertical e horizontal para o controle social lateral.

Within the extensive literature on international regionalism, the more limited academic work done on regional financial organizations (RFOs) tends to assume that, by pooling resources to address such common international economic issues as development funding and financial crises, RFOs contribute to economic stability in their parts of the global landscape. Although South America has led the pack in creating such RFOs, their effectiveness is limited by the asymmetry in economic heft of the continent's governments. Rather than weighing the significance of financial regionalism in South America from the point of view of the majority, we assess whether and how this phenomenon has contributed to Brazil's politico-economic rise to near-major-power standing on the world stage in the twenty-first century. Drawing on extensive interviews with Brazilian officials conducted in March 2013, we analyze three instances of South America's international public finance: development lending, crisis lending, and payment systems. Our findings suggest that self-generated unilateral and bilateral financial initiatives have brought Brasília far more significant economic and political results than have RFOs, whose various incarnations have yielded the continental giant few economic and only minor political gains.

Latin American women's accession to executive and legislative office has been accompanied by the widespread expectation that their participation will change policies in ways that benefit women's lives. This article uses an in-depth case study of sexual health reform in Argentina to explore the leadership and coalition-building activities of key political actors. As a case study, the article moves beyond critical mass theories, which argue that women's greater presence will result in gender policy reform. Rather, the article demonstrates that women's inclusion, even at high percentages, generates statutory change only when specific leaders build momentum for reform through issue networks and diverse coalitions. More important, leaders must mobilize resources within civil society and across government branches to ensure that successful policies are enacted. Whether Latin American women enjoy material changes thus depends on whether their leaders are committed to passing and implementing gender reforms.

This article examines the implementation of Peru's new water law and discusses how it produces new forms of water citizenship. Inspired by the global paradigm of “integrated water resources management,” the law aims to include all citizens in the management of the country's water resources by embracing a “new water culture.” We ask what forms of water citizenship emerge from the new water law and how they engage with local water practices and affect existing relations of inequality. We answer these questions ethnographically by comparing previous water legislation and how the new law currently is negotiated and contested in three localities in Peru's southern highlands. We argue that the law creates a new water culture that views water as a substance that is measurable, quantifiable, and taxable, but that it neglects other ways of valuing water. We conclude that water citizenship emerges from the particular ways water authorities and water users define rights to access and use water, on the one hand, and obligations to contribute to the construction and maintenance of water infrastructure and pay for the use of water, on the other.

Este artigo examina a atuação do escritor Jorge Amado como redator chefe no jornal literário Dom Casmurro (1937-1946). Conhecido e consagrado por sua produção literária iniciada ainda em 1931, o escritor baiano também foi figura atuante na vida política e cultural nacional. Embora estudiosos considerem a importância de Jorge Amado como literato e militante neste período, a atuação em Dom Casmurro tem recebido pouca atenção. Ao assumir em 1939 a redação deste periódico, num momento marcado por perseguições e censura do Estado Novo, Jorge Amado já militava no Partido Comunista além de ter publicado seis romances de sucesso. Por sua vez Dom Casmurro se constitui em um relevante periódico de literatura e cultura, desenvolvendo em suas páginas intenso debate sobre qual era efetivamente seu papel. Era ele veículo de expressão literária ou representante de uma determinada corrente política? Interessa neste artigo compreender as tensões que marcaram as relações entre os intelectuais, a imprensa e a política durante o Estado Novo através deste jornal e da atuação de Jorge Amado.

El Gran Chaco Argentino constituye la mayor extensión forestal y el más grande reservorio de biomasa del hemisferio sur extratropical. El sector situado al oeste de la isohieta de setecientos milímetros constituye el ambiente del Chaco Semiárido o Seco, ocupando sectores de las provincias de Salta, Chaco, Formosa, Santiago del Estero y Tucumán. Esta área del Chaco tiene una gran diversidad biológica y se caracteriza por un acelerado proceso de deforestación, en especial para la implantación del cultivo de soja. Concebido como un territorio vacío en términos demográficos, prevalece sobre el Chaco la idea de pobreza y marginalidad. Los cambios que están ocurriendo en los márgenes de este ambiente en relación con la expansión de la frontera agropecuaria, afecta a las poblaciones locales, transformando su dinámica demográfica. Este trabajo, por ello, trata de mostrar la magnitud de la deforestación y el impacto del avance de la frontera agropecuaria (especialmente del cultivo de soja) sobre la dinámica demográfica del área.

This note reviews the targeting performance of Bolsa Família and its impact on inequality, poverty, consumption, education, health care, and labor force participation. Bolsa Família has several design and implementation characteristics that distance it from a pure human-capital-based conditional cash transfer model. For that reason, we compare the impact of Bolsa Família to that of other conditional cash transfer programs in Latin America, such as in Mexico, Colombia, Ecuador, and Chile. We show that, as have other programs, Bolsa Família has helped reduce inequality and extreme poverty and has improved education outcomes, without having a negative impact on labor force participation. Where the program has failed to have its intended impact, in health and nutrition, supply-side constraints seem to be the principal problem.

This article examines the actions that millions of new-poor Argentine citizens took when confronted with impoverishment during the country's economic crisis in 2002. Drawing on World Bank and Latinobarómetro survey data, it explores how their distinct understandings of citizenship; their possession of human, social, physical, cultural, and financial capital; and aspects of their middle-class identity shaped the very specific forms of resistance that they adopted compared to the structural poor. It provides insights into why some citizens perceived their hardship as a political problem, formed collective grievances, and manifested their resistance through protest, while others located the causes of hardship in their own deficiencies and tended to confine their responses to individual self-improvement strategies. It also finds that differences in personal biographies, experiences of poverty, and the changing spaces available to protest influenced individuals' choice of action.

Este artículo discute la relación entre el Fondo Común Municipal (FCM) y la convergencia de ingresos municipales en Chile entre 2001 y 2011. Utilizando cuasi experimentos y ecuaciones dinámicas, se demuestra que este instrumento no tiene un efecto significativo en la velocidad de convergencia. El débil desarrollo de la descentralización y los bajos incentivos de las municipalidades para obtener fuentes propias de financiamiento, podrían promover diversos comportamientos estratégicos que distorsionarían el efecto redistributivo del FCM en las municipalidades, disminuyendo su impacto en la reducción de las disparidades territoriales en Chile.