Transforming Brazil: A Reform Era in Perspective

This volume re-examines the relationship between developmental strategy and political regime in 20th-century Brazil. The first part of the study examines the beginning in the 1920s and 1930s of the centralized regime and state-centred development model later challenged in the 19802, taking into account the economic and political role of Sao Paulo relative to the federal government. The analysis provides an account of the regime ruling Brazil from the 1930s through the 1980s. The second part focuses on the process of economic and political change in the 1980s and 1990s, paying particular attention to the Cardoso admininistration. The author’s analysis of developmental dynamics of the period before World War II challenges the notion that the Vargas state was the main protagonist in the onset of Brazilian industrialization. The concentration of industrialization in Sao Paulo can be explained in terms of social and economic conditions peculiar to that region. The study chronicles the failure of democratising after the revolution of 1930, probing the connections between the emergence of modern Brazilian authoritarianism and political dynamics related to regionalism. The account points to continuity in the corporatist system born in the Vegas era through the military era of 1964 - 85. Brazilian corporatism and the economic model it embraced came under attack in the 1980s and 1990s. This shift coincides with a period of democratization culminating in the Cardoso administration. Mauricio Font explores the political and institutional factors shaping this transition. He considers whether the economic reforms are leading to a new approach to development and their implications for the consolidation of democracy. Lastly, the volume brings out the broader significance of the Brazilian case for theories of development and democratic transitions.