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Brazilian development cooperation is increasingly in the spotlight. Africa is a major destination and agriculture tops the list of priority fields on intervention, with Embrapa leading cooperation projects. But patterns of cooperation in Africa are changing as other public, private and civil society actors enter the realm of cooperation and bring along contrasting narratives and experiences of agricultural development. This article maps the evolving nature of Brazilian development cooperation in agriculture and discusses emerging features of the Brazil-Africa encounter, considering knowledge framings, policy narratives, imaginaries and the motivations driving a diversity of technical and political actors.

• Este é um artigo publicado em acesso aberto e distribuído sob os termos da Licença de Atribuição Creative Commons, que permite uso irrestrito, distribuição e reprodução em qualquer meio, desde que o autor e a fonte originais sejam creditados.http://www.scielo.br/rbpi Revista Brasileira de Política Internacional ISSN 1983-3121 UNASUR, Brazil, and the South American defence cooperation: A decade later DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.1590/0034-7329201700212 Rev. Bras. Polít. Int., 60(2): e012, 2017 Abstract UNASUR and its Defence Council (SADC) were created under a promising scenario of regional cooperation. Almost ten years later, a growing demand for regional cooperation arises, facing, however, low levels of political willingness from local governments. Through the lenses of structural and neoclassical realism, this paper suggests that the lack of support by governments, especially the Brazilian one, due to a change in how domestic ideas are developed, and a transformation in the regional balance of power, have contributed to these institutions' quick obsolescence. Introduction S outh America has experienced significant political changes since 2015, with changes in government having taken place in Argentina, Brazil, and Peru. In the near future, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, and Bolivia will also undergo presidential elections while the prospects of the Chavismo in Venezuela tend to become even more critical as governance is under severe stress. A new political environment is gradually emerging on the subcontinent, directly challenging most of the underpinnings of the regional political and institutional framework set up in the previous decade to embrace and foster security and defence initiatives at the regional level.Since its inception, the South American Union of Nations (UNASUR) has been the most important institutional framework for political dialogue on security matters on the subcontinent, in accordance with its vocation and with the mandate envisaged in the 2008 Brasília Treaty. Even though the need for a genuine South American institutional framework for such a dialogue had been widely recognized, and the creation of the South American Defence Council (SADC) hailed as a major step towards regional cooperation in security and defence matters, the fact that the SADC embraced consensus as a primary criterion for decision-making, while at the same time lacking binding decision-making powers, was perceived as a significant potential constraint if regional stability was to be severely undermined and regional action was deemed an imperative. If, on the one hand, those choices reflect a pragmatic assessment of the political conditions that should be acknowledged and met to allow the very existence of the SADC, on the other, they also imply severe restrictions on its entitlements to act, which confirms its vocation as a dialogue forum rather than as a decision-making and operative body.Even if a positive performance of the SADC during its first four/five years might be alleged, the changes in the political land...

Considerações preliminaresO presente texto apresenta alguns dos resultados da pesquisa "Dimensões e Características Sociológicas do Narcotráfico no Brasil" 1 , particularmente no que se refere à caracterização do fenômeno no contexto brasileiro. Trata-se de um esforço inicial no sentido de dimensionar e caracterizar o narcotráfico em suas mais importantes tendências e manifestações na sociedade brasileira e de identificar as principais formas de sua vinculação ao narcotráfico interna-cional.O tema "narcotráfico" é relativamente novo tanto na agenda política quanto como objeto de estudo nas universidades brasileiras. Isso, porém, não significa que o mesmo não se tenha constituído fonte de preocupação e não tenha despertado a atenção das autoridades governamentais e da própria sociedade em períodos anteriores. Na verdade, existem leis voltadas para a questão do narcotráfico desde 1976.2 É igualmente verdadeiro que apenas nos últimos anos, em razão de seu agravamento, de suas origens, manifestações e implicações, tanto no plano doméstico como no das relações internacionais, o narcotráfico passou a ser preocupação de fato para a sociedade e para o governo.A maior atenção para com as dimensões dos problemas relacionados ao narcotráfico associa-se a três fatores básicos. Primeiramente, a relevância política e econômica que o tema assumiu no cenário internacional e regional. As drogas, afetando todos os países e projetando-se no território brasileiro, levam importantes parceiros, particularmente os Estados Unidos e a União Européia, a desenvolverem políticas em relação às quais tanto o governo como diferentes Rev. Bras. Polít. Int. 40 (1): 75-122 [1997]. * Professor titular do