[Women's representations and experiences with vaginal and cesarean delivery in public and private maternity hospitals].

This study analyzes the different representations and experiences of women from different social classes, including issues related to their relations with hospital staff in different institutional settings. This qualitative study focused on women who had experienced both types of delivery, in three maternity hospitals in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (one public, one fully private, and another private under an outsourcing agreement with the public health system). The study showed that variations in public and private service models result in different types of delivery care and different relations with staff, and are reflected in different birthing experiences for the women.

[Marketizing of the State, erosion of democracy and impoverishment of citizenship: global tendencies?].

This article analyses the advance of the neo-liberal regime, in order to contextualise the international formulation of policies focussed on poverty reduction. In recent debates, terms such as 'citizenship' and 'democracy' have been subject to critical scrutiny, revealing changes in the relations between citizens and the State which accompany the hegemony of economic criteria that put financial considerations at the centre of national states. We argue that analyses of such global processes require an ample political economy perspective, capable of illuminating how the substance of democracy and the legitimacy of state authority have been conditioned by the advance of new global entities that represent the interests of capital, favouring the concentration of wealth and the increase of poverty, inequality and exclusion, and installing a state of vital insecurity that affects the majority of the world's population.