Search

This article analyzes the impact of political sophistication on citizens' political preferences. After defining the concept and measurement of political sophistication, panel survey data from Caxias do Sul and Juiz de Fora in 2002 are used to assess its main determinants in the Brazilian context. Next, the article tests four hypotheses derived from existing scholarship about the effects of political sophistication on individual preferences and information processing. The four hypotheses tested are: 1) more politically sophisticated citizens are more ideologically constrained in their political attitudes then less sophisticated individuals; 2) more sophisticated citizens present more stable attitudes over time than less sophisticated individuals; 3) more sophisticated citizens acquire more political information over time than less sophisticated individuals, and; 4) more sophisticated citizens tend to express opinions more frequently than less sophisticated individuals. The analyses in the paper provide strong support for all four hypotheses. Finally, the article discusses some implications of the results for the study of public opinion and elections in Brazil. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents a comparative study of social, political, economical, and health situation aged population of Brazil, Spain, and United States. A discussion was made about changing process age structure base don literature of the three countries. Data analysis confirmed improvements in ag people life conditions, and changing on social insertion and political and moral attitudes. Data indicat also that there are no similarities or differences among the countries which can be attributed to econom conditions, nor to cultural traditions. The duality expresses a transition in this segment, traditiona viewed in a negative way and, nowadays, also considered as economic and familiar support. T perspectives are that the aged people positive social role will be emphasized by naturalization of agi and by establishing de analytic references on aging itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much of the recent analysis of presidentialism has been based on the assumption that executive-legislative confrontation creates simultaneous conditions for policy stability and regime breakdown. In the first section of the paper, I show that there is an inherent logical tension between these two predictions and that they rely on contradictory assumptions. In the second section, I develop a model of executive-legislative deadlock and argue that regime instability is more likely when partisan players are unilaterally impatient, when institutional design is biased in favor of one party, and when the number of parties is greater. In the third section, I test the predictions of the model using time-series cross-section data for 19 presidential countries in the Western Hemisphere between 1950 and 2000. Finally, I discuss how this approach illuminates some empirical puzzles like the historical survival of American presidentialism and the lower levels of regime instability created by executive-legislative deadlock in Latin America in the 1990s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]