BROADCASTS.com

The 2014 presidential election in Brazil was the closest and dirtiest contest since the first elections in 1989, post-military-rule Brazil. At the election's start, Brazilians were reeling from nationwide protests against government corruption, a failing economy, and the use of public funds for World Cup stadiums and ineffective public services. The election divided the nation between incumbent Dilma Roussef of the Worker's Party and her opponent, Governor Aecio Neves, with yet more would-be voters fed up with politics. Mariano Magalhaes, with the assistance of Samantha DeForest-Davis, discusses some of the concerns rising from President Dilma's reelection, amid a still ailing economy and serious allegations of party corruption, for the leadership's capacity to administer the country at home and abroad over the next four years.

Mariano Magalhaes, professor of Political Science at Augustana College, served as a Fulbright Scholar in 2011 at the Universidade de Brasilia where he led a course in Democracy in Latin America and researched the confederate strengthening of Brazilian municipal governments. Similarly, he has also written on the decentralization of power to state and local governance in Brazil and on civil-military relations during the state's democratic transition. In 2013, he returned to Brasilia (the capital) to interview past and current members of a federal ministry for its role in the development of state feminism. At Augustana, Dr. Magalhaes has over the past decade helped university students to study abroad by leading students on visits to Peru, Ecuador, Brazil, and Mexico, and by developing a Brazil Term program which he directed in 2012 and 2014.

Samantha DeForest-Davis, is an undergraduate student of Professor Magalhaes. She is completing a triple major in Political Science, Sociology, and Africana Studies. For more information on the Foreign Relations Council visit their website.