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Is the western liberal model of democracy adequate to analyze the new political regimes of the Third Wave of Democracy? After reviewing the recent literatures on democratization and economic reform, I refer to their signifying concepts, namely, governability, governance and democracy, as well as to their implicit normative biases. I give especial attention to the concept of democracy as used by those literatures, based on the so-called procedural minimum (Schumpeter/Dahl). Considered too minimum by leading authors, this definition has been expanded to include "precising" attributes. Rather than augmenting even further Dahl?s list, I here propose to include in the regime change investigation the characteristics of the decision-making process, as an analytical tool to characterize the new political systems on their own terms. I claim that this approach better exams the more or less democratic character of the building regimes in the period between elections, bringing to the fore the question of vertical accountability of the bureaucracies, issue unsatisfactorily treated by democracy theorists. The policy process approach allows as well for the identification of different types of democracy which differently combine characteristics of decision-making. Finally, with reference to the Brazilian case, I consider the type of political regime the emerging countries are able or willing to build, offering some working hypotheses to analyze them.

The article first offers some considerations regarding the concepts governability and government as used in the recent literature and, for analytical purposes, suggests the term governing capacity. In a context of economic reforms and democratization, Executive-Legislative relations form one of the key elements of governing capacity. Contesting Brazilian literature on this topic, the article grounds itself in basic policies on the agendas of the Collor and Itamar Franco administrations to argue that if there is a deficit in the implementation of a good share of economic stabilization policies and policies to open up trade, produced within relatively insulated bureaucracies, at the same time the structural reform policies submitted to Congress (social welfare, privatization, administration, taxation) have fallen short not just in the realm of implementation but in the realm of formulation as well. Underscoring the complexity of the policy-making phase, the text cites some causes, such as problems the government encounters in building stable majorities within Congress. Given this difficulty, the Executive must often engage in tough negotiations to get governmental policies approved, and it ends up entering into a pattern of conflict in its interactions with the Legislative branch. As a consequence, government leaders are tempted to favor the relatively insulated arena of bureaucracies over the parliament, with foreseeable consequences for the process of democratization within Brazil. Based on this scenario, the article asks what type of democracy Brazil can or is willing to build

The article aims to deepen the discussion about the analysis of Brazilian foreign policy as a public policy. Without denying certain particularities of foreign policy, one can verify growing similarities between both areas since the inauguration of the Brazilian democratic regime in 1988. This new moment seems to be characterized by a progressive erosion of the proverbial "insulation" of Itamaraty as well as by an approximation of foreign policy to the interests of the Brazilian society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study will exam the relative importance of values and interests in Obama's foreign policy, focusing on crucial cases: the military actions related to Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Non-Syria, Al-Qaeda and ISIL. We will argue that his "leading from behind" strategy is not very distant from the foreign and defense strategies of his post-Cold War predecessors, by which democracy is seen as an assurance to security. According to Obama's strategy, Americans will only provide support for the building of democracy in the target countries, while this task should be performed by the locals themselves. Americans will provide military training to the new governments as well so they can be responsible for their own security, including preventing regrouping of terrorists in their soil. If Obama opposes the imposing of democracy by the use of force, empirical data shows that his administration is "not prepared to accept" any option that threats US security or American liberal-democratic values, bringing in this way values and interests very close to each other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Everyone knows that democracy played a role in the Bush Doctrine. What not everyone knows is that this role was essential for the doctrine to be put into operation under which the Iraq invasion was prepared and launched. We argue moreover that, even if aggressive, the Bush doctrine is compatible with the American Liberal Tradition. To demonstrate these arguments we analyze the links between democracy, security, and the US national interests as expressed in the pillars of the American foreign policy since the end of Cold War. The consequential belief of the Bush Administration on the positive effect of exporting democracy by the use of force to Afghanistan and Iraq to fight terrorism will be remarked. It will be shown, however, that in the first years of the Bush Administration, among the justifications for the military interventions in the two countries, security reasons prevailed over democratic concerns, although the latter was significantly present since the early hours after September 11. It was only when it became clear that WMDs did not exist in Iraq that the exporting of democracy as the ultimate weapon to fight terrorism grew remarkably and prevailed over security reasons to invade those rogue states. The paper uses quantitative and qualitative content analysis of the speeches of President Bush and his Secretaries of State and Defense. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyses the pillars of the American foreign policy in the post-cold war period, focusing on the importance democracy vis-à-vis security plays in it as well as their relationship. More specifically the work aims to define the bases of the doctrine of the foreign policy that justify exporting democracy by the use of force. It was used quantitative and qualitative content analysis of 414 speeches of the Presidents and Secretaries of States in the period 1989-2008. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyses the different roles of the United States as seen by their Presidents in the post-cold war period, confronting them with the military actions that occurred in each administration and examining the place democracy plays in the rethoric of the Presidents' justifications of the interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article assess the importance of external variables vs.internal variables to the promotion of democracy. It focus especifically on the exporting of democracy, basic pillar of the doctrines of the post-cold war American foreign policy,even after September 11. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]