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The increased visibility of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and social movements at the international level invites continuing evaluation of the extent and significance of the role they now play in world politics. While the presence of such new actors is easily demonstrated, international relations scholars have debated their significance. The authors argue that the concept of global civil society sets a more demanding standard for the evaluation of transnational political processes than has been applied in prior accounts of transnational activity. Further, most empirical studies of this activity have focused on a limited number of NGOs within a single issue-area. Using three recent UN world conferences as examples of mutual encounters between state-dominated international politics and global civic politics, the authors develop the concept of global civil society to provide a theoretical foundation for a systematic empirical assessment of transnational relations concerning the environment, human rights, and women at the global level.

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Are presidential democracies inherently unstable and prone to breakdown? Recent work on Latin America suggests that the region has seen the emergence of a new kind of instability, where individual presidents do not manage to stay in office to the end of their terms, but the regime itself continues. This article places the Latin American experiences in a global context, and finds that the Latin American literature helps to predict the fates of presidents in other regions. The first stage of a selection model shows that presidents who are personally corrupt and preside over economic decline in contexts where democracy is paired with lower levels of GDP/capita are more likely to face challenges to their remaining in office for their entire terms. For the challenged presidents in this set, the risk of early termination increases when they use lethal force against their challengers, but decreases if they are corrupt. These factors help account for the disproportionately large number of South American presidents who have actually been forced from office, the "South American anomaly" of the title.

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How do societies make complex choices about concrete energy alternatives? Can citizens play effective roles in balancing risks and benefits? This article proposes that energy choices can be best understood as the result of a balance of power between state-society coalitions that aim to either block or enable the project. Environmental licensing and financing decisions are two decision points where the coalitions face off-and where energy projects go forward or are stopped. The article demonstrates that environmental licensing has become an unexpectedly stringent process in Brazil, with both formal opportunities and historic practices increasing the influence of blocking coalitions. Yet case studies of the Belo Monte hydroelectric dam and massive new petroleum reserves in the "pre-salt" region show that blocking coalitions emerge inconsistently in the same institutional context, illustrating the hazards of relying on public mobilization for addressing certain kinds of risk situations. An "anticipatory state" may also pre-empt mobilization by proactively responding to the concerns blocking coalitions are likely to raise.Keywords Brazil . Energy politics . Environmental licensing . Citizen participation While millions of gallons of oil spilled into the Gulf of Mexico in the summer of 2010, dilemmas that often go unnoticed became headlines. How are choices made about the evident risks of energy production? How are costs balanced against the benefits of the energy produced? Who acquires risks, and who is likely to benefit? Perhaps most important, who should participate in this balancing exercise, and how? What roles can citizens effectively play?This article approaches those questions with a case study of Brazil. As the Brazilian state anticipates a period of economic growth, the Ministry of Mines and Energy has completed its decadal plan for expanding Brazil's energy sources accordingly (Ministério de Minas e Energia 2010). The current energy matrix is St Comp Int Dev (2011) 46:349-371

This article examines developments in the renewable electricity sector in Brazil and China since 2000. The two countries share many interests with respect to solar and wind power, but institutional differences in state–business relations led to different outcomes. In China, in a context of corporatist state–business relations, state interventions were more far-reaching, with the state coordinating with state-owned banks, offering large financial and investment incentives to state-owned or state-connected enterprises. By contrast, in Brazil’s public–private partnerships, state support to promote renewable energies was shaped by a stronger preference for competitive auctions and stricter financing rules. The differences in state–business relations help explain the observed developmental trajectories in wind and solar power.

This article focuses on one common transnational NGO strategy, the boomerang strategy. In this strategy, Southern NGOs seek international allies to help them pressure their states from outside. The article uses a case study of a transnational mobilization against a water superhighway or "Hidrovia" in the La Plata River basin in South America to develop arguments about the long term impacts of throws of the boomerang. I argue that what happens after the boomerang depends on two related factors: the extent to which the target state(s) have accepted the international norms at stake and the presence or absence of a specific set of domestic capacities in the target state(s). Because Brazil has higher levels of national environmental legal capacity and greater acceptance of international environmental norms than its neighbors, environmentalists were able to block the Hidrovia there after the successful collective pressure, while Argentine environmentalists were not. Copyright (c) 2002 Massachusetts Institute of Technology.