that scale, Brazil is, distinct from much of Latin America in the nineteenth century, they actually have a long tradition of elections and representative government, it's very much like England in the nineteenth century, there's an emperor, there's a cabinet, there's a parliament and that parliament forms and reforms many times.  So in that sense, there are competitive elections and constant changes of the parties in power.  But about one per cent of the population is voting. ERIC VAN BEMMEL Now they formed a constitution in 1891 that was modelled on that of the United States. MARSHALL EAKIN Yes.  Essentially what happened, Brazil's history is a pendulum swinging back and forth between centralisation of power and decentralisation.  So under the empire power is heavily centralised around the emperor.  What that constitution does is takes a sort of US model of saying, we should be a federal republic and devolve power back to the states and the central government should be weaker.  So in this period from roughly 1890 to 1930, what you see in Brazil was the power in Brazil really devolves to state governments and the central government is fairly weak. ERIC VAN BEMMEL In that period, I guess somewhere between the 1870s and the 1930s, is a key period for the formation of modern Brazil and its national culture.  As you say, slavery was abolished and the Brazilian elites, the inteligencia, the debated notions, I suppose, of political theory and social organisation, cultural values.  But didn't many of