Paulo Roberto de Almeida
Temas de relações internacionais, de política externa e de diplomacia brasileira, com ênfase em políticas econômicas, em viagens, livros e cultura em geral. Um quilombo de resistência intelectual em defesa da racionalidade, da inteligência e das liberdades democráticas.
O que é este blog?
Este blog trata basicamente de ideias, se possível inteligentes, para pessoas inteligentes. Ele também se ocupa de ideias aplicadas à política, em especial à política econômica. Ele constitui uma tentativa de manter um pensamento crítico e independente sobre livros, sobre questões culturais em geral, focando numa discussão bem informada sobre temas de relações internacionais e de política externa do Brasil. Para meus livros e ensaios ver o website: www.pralmeida.org. Para a maior parte de meus textos, ver minha página na plataforma Academia.edu, link: https://itamaraty.academia.edu/PauloRobertodeAlmeida.
segunda-feira, 24 de junho de 2013
Democraduras, ditacracias? Como sao as ditaduras do seculo 20? Oswaldo Hurtado (via Orlando Tambosi)
Paulo Roberto de Almeida
Ue'! Uma PEC 37 clandestina, sorrateira, escondida, envergonhada?
Parece que os membros do Ministério Público já não são mais necessários para a investigação.
Enfim, tudo o que queria a PEC 37.
É ou não é?
Paulo Roberto de Almeida
Presidência da República
Casa Civil Subchefia para Assuntos Jurídicos |
José Eduardo Cardozo
Miriam Belchior
Luís Inácio Lucena Adams
========
Uma opinião de juristas, mais ponderada:
Sancionada lei que amplia autonomia de delegados
Parcerias Estrategicas do Brasil: novo livro na praça (A.C. Lessa; H. Altemani, orgs.)
A Editora Fino Traço, o Centro de Estudos sobre o Pacífico e o Instituto de Relações Internacionais da Universidade de Brasília anunciam a publicação do livro ”Parcerias Estratégicas do Brasil: os significados e as experiências tradicionais”, obra coletiva organizada por Henrique Altemani de Oliveira, professor da Universidade Estadual da Paraíba – UEPB, e Antônio Carlos Lessa, professor do Instituto de Relações Internacionais da Universidade de Brasília.
A expressão parcerias estratégicas se converteu, ao longo dos últimos anos, em uma idéia importante das políticas externas de muitos países, inclusive do Brasil. Por isso, muita energia tem sido dispendida, em diferentes comunidades acadêmicas por todo o mundo, em esforços de análise em torno do sentido que a expressão adquiriu na prática diplomática de tantos e tão diferentes atores.
Nesta obra coletiva se procura debater a ideia de parcerias estratégicas, no Brasil e em outros países, como também as suas diferentes acepções e graduações. São apresentadas reflexões sobre alguns relacionamentos tradicionais que adquiraram sentido prioritário no cálculo da política externa brasileira contemporânea. Busca-se também avançar na reflexão acerca da origem e do desenvolvimento de novas formas de parcerias, como as que se observa em espaços multilaterais e em processos de regionalização. E, finalmente, trazer para a reflexão sob a perspectiva brasileira, algumas outras experiências, como as que se concretizam na Ásia e na integração européia.
Neste volume são examinados os marcos conceituais das parcerias estratégicas, os relacionamentos com os países que denominamos de parceiros tradicionais (Estados Unidos, União Européia, Portugal, Espanha e Japão) e os parceiros regionais (o conjunto sul-americano, a Argentina e a Venezuela).
Acesse aqui a apresentação e a introdução deste livro.
Este livro pode ser adquirido nas melhores livrarias, ou diretamente no site da Editora Fino Traço – clique aqui para comprá-lo.
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Fim do populismo na politica brasileira? - Ricardo Velez-Rodriguez
Fim da bonanca brasileira? Alemanha examina o Brasil (Der Spiegel)
The End of Brazil's Boom: Inflation and Corruption Fuel Revolt
Eike Batista, who was Brazil's richest man at the time, had big plans: He wanted to build a luxury resort, complete with a helipad and marina. He hired star architects and the building was gutted down to its foundation walls. The idea was to reopen the hotel in time for next year's World Cup soccer championship. But now the cranes are standing still and most of the workers have been laid off. The wind blows through the windows and a homeless man is sleeping under an awning. The hotel is for sale. The multibillionaire has run out of money.The downfall of the Batista empire symbolizes the end of the economic boom -- and the multibillionaire embodies everything that hundreds of thousands of Brazilians, primarily from the middle class, are protesting against: nepotism, delusions of grandeur and the fabulous wealth of a select few. It started with demonstrations against raising the bus fare by 20 centavos (9 US cents), but rapidly became a more general uproar over the issue of who should benefit from Brazil's riches and what is more important -- new hospitals or glittering sports stadiums.
Batista enjoyed close ties with Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who extolled him as a model for the new Brazil. He received massive loans from the state, and when his son hit and killed a cyclist with his sports car, expensive lawyers managed to keep the young man from serving a prison sentence. A consortium that included Batista was awarded the contract to manage the rebuilt Maracanã Stadium in Rio. The renovation of the Hotel Glória is also financed with a loan from the state development bank. And Brazil's state-owned Petrobras has signed a deal to make Batista's port facilities more profitable.
The entrepreneur became the seventh richest man in the world in 2012, with a net worth of $30 billion ($23 billion). Then everything collapsed: Stock prices have plummeted in his empire of oil, mining and energy companies. His fortune has melted away to nearly one-third of its former size. He has slipped to 100th place in Forbes magazine's ranking of the world's richest people. Last week alone one of his companies lost 40 percent of its stock market value.
Batista also attracted investors with the prospect of huge oil reserves off Brazil's coast and promised them an increase in infrastructure contracts. But the wells have not supplied as much oil as hoped and many predictions have not materialized. Batista's "X" empire, as he likes to call his consortium, has turned out to be nothing but a pipe dream.
Cultural Impunity
Brazil has always been a permissive society. Those who are rich are rarely held accountable for their crimes. Politicians invoke their parliamentary immunity and there are plenty of kleptocrats in the country's town halls, governor's palaces and the National Congress, the legislative body of Brazil's federal government. According to a cynical Brazilian saying, "tudo acaba em samba" -- everything ends in a samba. For decades, Brazil's rich and powerful have relied on this culture of impunity.
It is also the fury over this mentality that is fueling the wave of protests rolling across the country. But the government has apparently failed to grasp this new development. It has reacted as usual: First, it tried to violently suppress the protests, then it tried to co-opt the protesters. Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff praised the demonstrators, and the mayors of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro rescinded the bus fare hike.
The protests are rocking the country at a critical moment. The Brazilian economy is starting to falter. Last year, it only grew by 0.9 percent, making Brazil the laggard among the emerging economies known as the BRICS -- Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.
Will the boom of the Lula years now be followed by the Brazilian blues? "The optimism was exaggerated, as is the pessimism," says Ilan Goldfajn, chief economist at Brazil's largest bank, Itaú Unibanco. Rating agencies are predicting economic growth of 2.5 percent for this year. Rousseff is trying to fuel consumption in a bid to kickstart the economy again. She has lowered interest rates, but this approach hasn't been successful. Many Brazilians are deeply in debt. They have purchased homes and cars on credit, and now they have to save money.
A Jump in Inflation
Furthermore, lowering interest rates has led to a rise in inflation, with significant price increases primarily for food and services. For a while, tomatoes were so prohibitively expensive that smugglers brought them into the country over the Argentinean border. Although the government has now raised interest rates again, this move will hardly be enough to stop inflation. The decline of the Brazilian real is continuing to fuel price increases, and imports are becoming increasingly expensive.
The jumps in prices evoke memories of the decades in which the country suffered from high inflation. The construction of the capital Brasília and megaprojects launched by the military dictatorship saddled subsequent democratic governments with a huge mountain of debt. By the mid-1980s, prices had exploded. The Brazilian central bank has introduced five new currencies since then. It wasn't until 1994 that then-Finance Minister Fernando Henrique Cardoso managed to stabilize the economy with a combination of austerity measures and currency reform.
In 2002, when the former labor leader Lula was elected, many investors pulled out their money. They were afraid that Lula would abandon the stability policy of his predecessor. But the left-wing politician surprised the financial world, and there were no socialist experiments. At the same time, there was a rise in global prices for fuel and food, Brazil's main exports. Billions in investments flowed into the country and the real became a highly overvalued currency.
Reforms Mired in Bureaucracy
The government introduced generous social programs for the poor, allowing 20 million Brazilians to climb into the middle class. During his second term in office, though, Lula threw open state coffers to launch megaprojects and grant loans to the poor -- all of which helped the campaign of his successor Rousseff, who used this political capital to win the 2010 presidential election.
Economic experts hoped that Rousseff would return to an orthodox financial policy. Instead, she lowered interest rates and intervened in monetary policy. She has expanded state capitalism in the country and founded a number of new state-owned companies. Meanwhile, important structural reforms have become mired in government bureaucracy. The road network is dilapidated, the ports are run by corrupt trade unions and efforts to expand the airports have bogged down. Even the exploitation of deep-sea oil reserves has stagnated due to a lack of technology. In 2006, Lula proudly announced that Brazil would achieve self-sufficiency thanks to its crude oil production. Now, gasoline and ethanol have to be imported.
Not much happens without the government in Brazil and, not surprisingly, corruption continues to flourish. The renovation and new construction of sports facilities for the World Cup and the Olympic Games was negotiated with only a handful of large contracting companies, and the projects are billions over budget. This wheeling and dealing between the government and companies is yet another reason why the middle class is up in arms.
'Brazil Costs'
Along with the poor and students, a large number of business people are taking to the streets. Shop owners and cab drivers have spontaneously joined the demonstrations. "There's plenty of money -- we pay enormous amounts of taxes," says Raoni Nery, 27, who joined the protest marches in Rio, "but we don't receive anything in return."
In view of the upcoming presidential election next year, the government is again opening its coffers. Two weeks ago, President Rousseff announced a special election present: Anyone who has been granted a low-interest state loan for a house can acquire an additional low-cost loan of up to 5,000 reais -- to purchase appliances and furniture.
Fresh Air [huummm] on History of International Relations - Seminario na UnB, 1-2/07/2013
Serão discutidos temas como: Pour l’histoire de relations internationales: penser la complexité du monde actuel; Rethinking Friendships and Conflicts in New Historiographies; CHIR and World Congress of Historical Sciences in China (2015): opportunities for fresh air on History of International Relations and possibilities for Brazilian historians.
Os interessados em participar podem mandar email para natalia.coelho@itamaraty.gov.br ou maria.notari@itamaraty.gov.br. Será emitido um certificado ao final do evento com 10h de participação.
Encore les manifs au Bresil, cette fois, au journal Le Monde
Corruption, éducation et santé : les trois points de la discorde brésilienne
D'après un sondage de l'institut Ibope publié samedi 22 juin par la revue Epoca, quelque 75 % des Brésiliens soutiennent désormais le mouvement de protestation. Le prix et la qualité des transports en commun sont le principal motif de ce soutien (77 %), devant le rejet de la classe politique (47 %) et la corruption (33 %). Ils sont 78 % à estimer que la santé publique est le secteur le plus sinistré. Partout sur les réseaux, les textes et exemples abondent pour illustrer les défaillances d'un système public dépassé ou défaillant. Un maelstrom de revendications révélateur d'un profond malaise dans ce Brésil où la croissance économique donne de sérieux signes d'essoufflement.
- LA CORRUPTION
- L'ÉDUCATION
- LA SANTÉ
- Nicolas Bourcier
Journaliste au Monde
Maquiavel 500 anos: O Moderno Principe, por Paulo Roberto de Almeida
(Brasília: Senado Federal, Conselho Editorial, 2010, volume 147, 195 p.; ISBN: 978-85-7018-343-9)
Paulo Roberto de Almeida
Doutor em ciências sociais. Mestre em economia internacional. Diplomata.
Se, por alguma fortuna histórica, Maquiavel retornasse, hoje, ao nosso convívio, com as suas virtudes de pensador prático, quase meio milênio depois de redigida sua obra mais famosa, como reescreveria ele o seu manual “hiper-realista” de governança política? Seriam os Estados modernos muito diversos dos principados do final da Idade Média?Este Maquiavel revisitado, voltado para a política contemporânea, dialoga com o genial pensador florentino, segue seus passos naquelas “recomendações” que continuam aparentemente válidas para a política atual, mas não hesita em oferecer novas respostas para velhos problemas de administração dos homens.Sumário:Prefácio
Dedicatória
1. Dos regimes políticos: os democráticos e os outros
2. Das velhas oligarquias e do Estado de direito
3. Da variedade de Estados capitalistas
4. Do governo pelos homens e do governo pelas leis
5. Da transição política nos regimes democráticos
6. Da conquista do poder: a liderança política
7. Da eficácia do comando e da manutenção do poder
8. Da ilegitimidade política: da demagogia e da força
9. Das repúblicas democráticas e sua base econômica
10. Das forças armadas e das alianças militares
11. Do Estado laico e da força das religiões
12. Da profissionalização das forças militares
13. Dos gastos com defesa e da soberania política
14. Da preparação estratégica do líder político
15. Do exercício da autoridade
16. Da administração econômica da prosperidade
17. Do uso da força em política
18. Da mentira e da sinceridade em política
19. Da dissimulação como forma de arte
20. Da dissuasão e da defesa do Estado
21. Da construção da imagem: verdade e propaganda
22. Dos ministros e secretários de Estado
23. Dos aduladores e dos verdadeiros conselheiros
24. Da arte pouco nobre de arruinar um Estado
25. Do acaso e da necessidade em política
26. Da defesa do Estado contra os novos bárbaros
Carta a Niccolò Machiavelli
Recomendações de leituras
Maquiavel: o nascimento da politica moderna - Corrado Vivanti ( book review)
Five-hundred years ago, Machiavelli wrote a guide for the
busy executive so shocking that it wasn't published
until after his death.
It is now 500 years since Niccolò Machiavelli produced the most famous book on politics ever written. On Dec. 10, 1513, he wrote a letter to a friend describing a day in his life and remarking by the way that he had composed a "little work," one of his "whimsies," on principalities. This was "The Prince," a short book for the busy executive so shocking that it wasn't published until 1532, after Machiavelli's death. It was coupled with the "Discourses on Livy" (1531), a much longer book for those readers with more time to observe and reflect. These are his major works, the ones that he said contain everything he knew.
In them he openly denounced both Christianity and the church: the "ambitious idleness" that Christianity imposed on Christians by demeaning worldly honor and also the "dishonesty" of priests, who govern by invoking the fear of God but "do not [themselves] fear the punishment that they do not see and do not believe." He attacked morality by declaring it unaffordable: A good man will "come to ruin" among so many others who aren't good. And he redirected politics by asserting that a prince must "learn to be able not to be good." Yet he also said, still more shockingly, that he believed that his advice to do evil "would bring common benefit to everyone."
Niccolò Machiavelli: An Intellectual Biography
The general response to this blast from its first appearance was to make Machiavelli's name into an epithet of scheming evil. Since the 19th century, however, almost all Machiavelli scholars have made excuses for him, blaming the corruption of his time or his "context" rather than him. The question is how well this attempt to rescue Machiavelli from condemnation serves either our understanding or his reputation.
The late Corrado Vivanti, editor of the standard edition of Machiavelli's works, helps to answer this question with this sensible and useful book. First published in 2008 in Italian and now appearing in translation to mark the quincentenary of "The Prince," it is a scholar's book, addressing a general audience but with a view to the choir of fellow academics. With the benign calm appropriate to messages from the grave, Vivanti delivers some hurtful blows, as when he declares the widespread republican interpretation of Machiavelli, holding that republics can avoid the faults of princes, to be a "somewhat forced reading." Jacob Burckhardt, the 19th-century Swiss historian who invented the term "Renaissance," is reproved for his fancy aesthetic slant on Machiavelli's "art of the state."
Vivanti devotes the first half of his book to events in Machiavelli's life, for Machiavelli himself had spoken of his knowledge from "long experience with modern things," as well as his "continuous reading" of the ancients. One experience was watching the popular preacher Savonarola being hanged and burned in Florence for heresy in 1498, but Vivanti doesn't explain why Machiavelli could have praised him in the "Discourses" for his "learning, prudence, and virtue of spirit."
The second half then briefly analyzes each of Machiavelli's writings, most of them done after he left office as secretary of the Florentine republic in 1512. Vivanti calls "The Prince" "typically humanist" because it mixes together ancient and modern examples. To do this today would be considered ahistorical. But since the practice was typical in Machiavelli's time, the author says, it is "cloaked in history." In this way, Vivanti uses history to cloak the Machiavellian call for republics to adopt "well-used cruelties"—and not be upset about it. Other humanists recommended no such thing. But then Machiavelli never hesitated to arouse "the indignation of God-fearing souls."
Machiavelli's political experience was by no means glorious, certainly not as notable as that of the several figures that he disparages in "The Prince"—to say nothing of Cesare Borgia, the bastard son of Pope Alexander VI, whose example he cites as the best teacher. Yet Machiavelli's "The Prince" is as momentous as it is famous. His writings, even the minor ones, show the greatness for which he is being remembered this year. How then can the greatness of his writings be interpreted in the light of his deeds, which are mediocre at best and overall a failure? For as secretary he tried and failed to secure a vigorous citizen militia so that Florence wouldn't have to depend on mercenaries. Machiavelli in other words failed to live up to his own signature motto—its depth explored in his writings—of relying on "one's own arms."
The error of trying to explain a great thinker through his "sources," as scholars like to say, whether in other writings or in the events of his time, consists in trying to explain greatness by means of non-greatness, which is to explain it away. Vivanti is aware of the problem. Quoting another historian, he says that "from the mind of Machiavelli flows the modern world of the state." In his preface, he sets forth the greatness of Machiavelli, not as a figure of his time, the Renaissance, but as a founder of modernity.
For this grand role, the mind of Machiavelli must have been capable of acting on its own, informed but not dictated by the events of the time. Machiavelli had much to say on this issue himself. The prince, he said, must act "according to the times," but in such a way as to change those times. To be successful a prince must be a new prince, one who doesn't accept the status quo. Even an established prince must take account of his rivals and enemies and not wait for them to displace him but move ahead of them "proactively," as we would say, virtuously, as he said. The new prince must strive to set the trend and make everyone else depend on him, so that he doesn't merely follow the trend.
Is this piece of Machiavelli's mind beginning to feel familiar to our modern eye and ear? Here, in the constant need for novelty and acquisition—our freedom in combat with our necessity—we have the germ of our modern politics, our business, our intellectuals, our arts, our morals.
Mr. Mansfield is a professor of government at Harvard University.
A version of this article appeared June 24, 2013, on page A17 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Birth of the Modern.
Desgraca pouca e' bobagem: alem dos manifestantes, o deficit externo (preparem-se...)
Depois não digam que ninguém avisou; eu, e o velho do Restelo, já falamos disso há muito tempo...
Paulo Roberto de Almeida