Political Economy Of Brazil

This book assesses the performance of the first Lula government (2002-06) from different perspectives including economics, politics, history and social policy. While the focus is on Brazil, it also refers to the experiences of similar countries both for comparative purposes and for evidence of the success or otherwise of this 'new' era for Brazil.

Complementarities between political and economic institutions have kept Brazil in a low-level economic equilibrium since 1985.

This book uncovers the extent to which government policy in mid nineteenth-century Brazil followed the interests of the all-powerful coffee growing class. The testing ground for this question is monetary and banking policy, an area in which exporters and the Brazilian government were often at loggerheads. The development of the monetary and banking regime during the second half of the Brazilian Empire (1850-89) is examined in a chronological and thematic way. The book establishes two major points of historical fact: the peculiar nature of the monetary standard adopted in Brazil during part of the period, as well as the role of the Bank of Brazil therein. Additionally, the analysis broadens current knowledge of three of the major contemporary events in the financial sphere – the 1860 banking and corporate law, the Souto crisis of 1864 and the 1875 financial crisis that brought down Mauá’s business empire. This book will be of interest to academics, both as secondary literature for their own research and as material that could be used in class at the advanced undergraduate or graduate levels. It will appeal to those interested not only in Brazilian economic and financial history, but also to students of political economy in general.

The transition from authoritarian to democratic government in Brazil unleashed profound changes in government and society that cannot be adequately understood from any single theoretical perspective. The great need, say Graham and Wilson, is a holistic vision of what occurred in Brazil, one that opens political and economic analysis to new vistas. This need is answered in The Political Economy of Brazil, a groundbreaking study of late twentieth-century Brazilian issues from a policy perspective. The book was an outgrowth of a year-long policy research project undertaken jointly by the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs and the Teresa Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies, both at the University of Texas at Austin. In this book, several noted scholars focus on specific issues central to an understanding of the political and economic choices that were under debate in Brazil. Their findings reveal that for Brazil the break with the past—the authoritarian regime—could not be complete due to economic choices made in the 1960s and 1970s, and also the way in which economic resources committed at that time locked the government into a relatively limited number of options in balancing external and internal pressures. These conclusions will be important for everyone working in Latin American and Third World development.

In this first overview of the Brazilian republican state based on extensive primary source material, Steven Topik demonstrates that well before the disruption of the export economy in 1929, the Brazilian state was one of the most interventionist in Latin America. This study counters the previous general belief that before 1930 Brazil was dominated by an export oligarchy comprised of European and North American capitalists and that only later did the state become prominent in the country’s economic development. Topik examines the state’s performance during the First Republic (1889–1930) in four sectors—finance, the coffee trade, railroads, and industry. By looking at the controversies in these areas, he explains how domestic interclass and international struggles shaped policy and notes the degree to which the state acted relatively independently of civil society. Topik’s primary concern is the actions of state officials and whether their decisions reflected the demands of the ruling class. He shows that conflicting interests of fractions of the ruling class and foreign investors gradually led to far greater state participation than any of the participants originally desired, and that the structure of the economy and of society—not the intentions of the actors—best explains the state’s economic presence.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1969.

The Political Economy of Lula’s Brazil describes the social, political and economic transformations that led to increased interest in the tropical giant at the start of the 21st century. This volume demonstrates that Brazil’s rise was the result of the adoption of heterodox economic policies, while also highlighting the obstacles to choosing an egalitarian development path in Latin America. Adopting an innovative perspective in terms of methodology and interpretation, contributors from Brazil, Latin America and France follow a non-dogmatic critical approach in order to explain the institutional changes that made a new cycle of development possible in Brazil. The authors also argue that the evolution of Brazil, following the implementation of leftist policies, paradoxically gave birth to several economic, political and environmental contradictions. They contend that these contradictions, including the falling rate of profit linked to the full employment of resources; the redistributive process seen as a menace by the conservative middle classes; and the growing intervention of the state in the different markets, eventually led to the end of the early 21st century development cycle. Providing clues to understanding the contradictory and painful path towards the development of semi-industrialised countries, this book will interest students and academics in the fields of economics, sociology, history and political science. The story it tells may also interest all those searching for independent analysis of the successes and failures of Lula’s Brazil.