Brazil has undergone transformative change over the twenty-five years of the Nova República. As the nation prepares to inaugurate Dilma Rousseff as its new president, Albert Fishlow traces the social, political, economic, and diplomatic history of Brazil during the last quarter century and looks forward to the future.

Politics has been profoundly altered in Brazil, as popular participation in the electoral process has widened. Economic rules are now more permanent, and economic advance more regular. A healthier and longer life is now available to a broader swath of the population; there is opportunity for social advance. Foreign policy has consequence, now internally as well as externally. Fishlow details and interprets these developments and envisions what the future holds for Latin America's largest nation.

Rousseff's two immediate predecessors —Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (Lula) —are tough acts to follow. Their influence has been profound, and Brazil is now a very different nation than it was in the 1980s. Fishlow's insightful book clearly explains how and why these developments unfolded and what they portend for the future —it is essential reading for anyone trying to grasp what is happening down in Rio.

Contents 1. Introduction 2. Political Change 3. Searching for Economic Growth 4. An Inherited Social Debt 5. Foreign Policy in a Changing World 6. Democracy Deepens 7. Economic Advance Begins 8. Social Policy Firmly Implanted 9. Brazil as a Global Player 10. Looking Forward

Political parties and elections are the mainsprings of modern democracy. In this classic volume, Richard S. Katz explores the problem of how a given electoral system affects the role of political parties and the way in which party members are elected. He develops and tests a theory of the differences in the cohesion, ideological behavior, and issue orientation of Western parliamentary parties on the basis of the electoral systems under which they compete. A standard in the field of political theory and thought, The Theory of Parties and the Electoral System contributes to a better understanding of parliamentary party structures and demonstrates the wide utility of the rationalistic approach for explaining behavior derived from the self-interest of political actors.

The Tocqueville Review is a French-American bilingual journal devoted to the comparative study of social change, primarily in Europe and the United States, but also covering major developments in other parts of the world, in the spirit of Alexis de Tocqueville’s pioneer investigations. A journal of social science, the Review publishes essays on current affairs, history, and political philosophy; it also features a regular section on Tocquevillean studies.

For four decades, Venezuela prided itself for having one of the most stable representative democracies in Latin America. Then, in 1992, Hugo Ch

World War II forced extensive and comprehensive social and political changes on nations across the globe. This comparative examination of health insurance in the United States and Japan during and after the war explores how World War II shaped the health care systems of both countries. To compare the development of health insurance in the two countries, Takakazu Yamagishi discusses the impact of total war on four factors: political structure, interest group politics, political culture, and policy feedback. During World War II, the U.S. and Japanese governments realized that healthy soldiers, workers, mothers, and children were vital to national survival. While both countries adopted new, expansive national insurance policies as part of their mobilization efforts, they approached doing so in different ways and achieved near-opposite results. In the United States, private insurance became the predominant means of insuring people, save for a few government-run programs. Japan, meanwhile, created a near-universal, public insurance system. After the war, their different policy paths were consolidated. Yamagishi argues that these disparate outcomes were the result of each nation’s respective war experience. He looks closely at postwar Japan and investigates how political struggles between the American occupation authority and U.S. domestic forces, such as the American Medical Association, helped solidify the existing Japanese health insurance system. Original and tightly argued, this volume makes a strong case for treating total war as a central factor in understanding how the health insurance systems of the two nations grew, while bearing in mind the dual nature of government intervention—however slight—in health care. Those interested in debates about health care in Japan, the United States, and other countries, and especially scholars of comparative political development, will appreciate and learn from Yamagishi’s study.

This landmark collection of newly commissioned essays explores how diverse women of African descent have practiced religion as part of the work of their ordinary and sometimes extraordinary lives. By examining women from North America, the Caribbean, Brazil, and Africa, the contributors identify the patterns that emerge as women, religion, and diaspora intersect, mapping fresh approaches to this emergent field of inquiry. The volume focuses on issues of history, tradition, and the authenticity of African-derived spiritual practices in a variety of contexts, including those where memories of suffering remain fresh and powerful. The contributors discuss matters of power and leadership and of religious expressions outside of institutional settings. The essays study women of Christian denominations, African and Afro-Caribbean traditions, and Islam, addressing their roles as spiritual leaders, artists and musicians, preachers, and participants in bible-study groups. This volume's transnational mixture, along with its use of creative analytical approaches, challenges existing paradigms and summons new models for studying women, religions, and diasporic shiftings across time and space.