Henrique Almeida de Castro


I am a Brazilian social scientist working as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Konstanz. My work generally revolves around State-society relations, exploring the structures of day-to-day interactions between organized groups and the public administration. Some of my research topics have included the persistence (or not) of corporatist policymaking in new democracies, civil society organizations’ involvement in enforcing labor law, and participatory bodies under autocratic pressure. I am also interested in conceptual and methodological issues surrounding institutional thinking in the social sciences and its relation to legal theory. My work spans the disciplines of socio-legal studies, comparative politics, and political sociology.

At the University of Konstanz, I have been associated with the Zukunftskolleg, the Department of Sociology, and the Cluster of Excellence “The Politics of Inequality” since May 2024. I was previously a postdoctoral fellow at the FGV São Paulo Law School’s Center for Law and Political Economy. I studied law at the University of São Paulo (B.A., 2016; Ph.D., 2022), where I was associated with the Law and Policy Research Group. During my doctoral studies, I was a visiting fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation.

Picture: Weekend Argus, 19 June 1993 edition

Book project

My book project, "Keeping a Seat at the Table: Unions and Policymaking Rules in New Democracies", investigates whether and how labor unions have mobilized to remain included in policy formulation bodies in recently transitioned democracies. It argues that democratic transitions provide windows of opportunity for civil society organizations who desire participation in policymaking but fear future exclusion to push for new legal rules they can later activate to protect and institutionalize their positions inside the public administration. The book provides comparative historical analyses of the South African, Brazilian, South Korean, and Slovenian cases.

Picture: Higino Silva

Research project

In Konstanz, I will begin the project "Curbing Labor Violations in Hard-to-Reach Places: Civil Society's Strategic Repertoires in Rural Brazil". Brazil, a major player in food value chains, is also a hotspot for labor violations from irregular contracting to slave-like employment. The country's secluded rural workplaces are an extreme case of enforcement difficulty for authorities, and we know their successes have depended on the cooperation of local unions and other civil society organizations. Yet, we understand little about these organizations, including the conditions they face, the strategies available to them, and why they behave in specific ways and not others. The research will draw on fieldwork to conceptualize and explain civil society’s strategic repertoires in such hard-to-reach places.

Highlight publications

Labor-Inclusive Corporatism After Democratic Transitions: Institutionalization in South Africa and Brazil (Forthcoming)

Institutions Are Not Rules: Realigning the Ontology Behind Theories of Change

The Legal Construction of Power in Deliberative Governance