The Political Construction of Brazil

The Political Construction of Brazil
Author: Luiz Carlos Bresser Pereira
Publisher:
Total Pages: 419
Release: 2017
Genre: Brazil
ISBN: 9781626373075

A big and bold book by a leading Brazilian public intellectual and scholar-practitioner. Whether or not one agrees with his conclusions, Bresser-Pereira reaches deep into the history of the turbulent twentieth century to set the terms for a new debate on Brazil¿s development in the twenty-first. --Matthew Taylor, American University Spanning the period from the country¿s independence in 1822 through early 2015, Luiz Carlos Bresser-Pereira assesses the trajectory of Brazil¿s political, social, and economic development. Bresser-Pereira draws on his decades of first-hand experience to shed light on the many paradoxes that have characterized Brazil¿s polity, its society, and the relations between the two across nearly two centuries. Luiz Carlos Bresser-Pereira is professor emeritus of politics and economics at the Getulio Vargas Foundation. In addition to his long academic career, he has served as Brazil¿s minister of finance, minister of federal administration and state reform, and minister of science and technology, and also as secretary of the government of the state of São Paulo.

Technocrats and the Politics of Drought and Development in Twentieth-Century Brazil

Technocrats and the Politics of Drought and Development in Twentieth-Century Brazil
Author: Eve E. Buckley
Publisher: UNC Press Books
Total Pages: 299
Release: 2017-07-28
Genre: History
ISBN: 1469634317

Eve E. Buckley’s study of twentieth-century Brazil examines the nation’s hard social realities through the history of science, focusing on the use of technology and engineering as vexed instruments of reform and economic development. Nowhere was the tension between technocratic optimism and entrenched inequality more evident than in the drought-ridden Northeast sertão, plagued by chronic poverty, recurrent famine, and mass migrations. Buckley reveals how the physicians, engineers, agronomists, and mid-level technocrats working for federal agencies to combat drought were pressured by politicians to seek out a technological magic bullet that would both end poverty and obviate the need for land redistribution to redress long-standing injustices.

The Political Economy of Brazil

The Political Economy of Brazil
Author: Lawrence Graham
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Total Pages: 318
Release: 2012-05-30
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0292745222

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.

Mass Strikes and Social Movements in Brazil and India

Mass Strikes and Social Movements in Brazil and India
Author: Jörg Nowak
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 319
Release: 2019-03-20
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 303005375X

This book explores new forms of popular organisation that emerged from strikes in India and Brazil between 2011 and 2014. Based on four case studies, the author traces the alliances and relations that strikers developed during their mobilisations with other popular actors such as students, indigenous peoples, and people displaced by dam projects. The study locates the mass strikes in Brazil’s construction industry and India’s automobile industry in a global conjuncture of protest movements, and develops a new theory of strikes that can take account of the manifold ways in which labour unrest is embedded in local communities and regional networks. “Jörg Nowak has written an ambitious, wide-ranging and very important book. Based on extensive empirical research in Brazil and India and a thorough analysis of the secondary literature, Nowak reveals that numerous labour conflicts develop in the absence of trade unions, but with the support of kinship networks, local communities, social movements and other types of associations. This impressive work may well become a major building block for a new interpretation of global workers’ struggles.” —Marcel van der Linden, International Institute of Social History, The Netherlands “Nowak’s book meticulously details the trajectory of strikes and its resultant new forms of organisations in India and Brazil. The central focus of this analytically rich and thought provoking book is to search for a new political alternative model of organising workers. A very good deed indeed!” —Nandita Mondal, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, India “Jörg Nowak analyses with critical sense forms of popular organization that often remain invisible. It is an indispensable book for all those who are looking for more effective analytical resources to better understand the present situation and the future promises of the workers’ movements.” —Roberto Véras de Oliveira, Federal University of Paraíba, Brazil “In this timely and important study, Nowak convincingly challenges the dominant Eurocentric approach to labour conflict and calls for a new theory of strikes. He stresses the need to engage in a wider perspective that includes social reproduction, neighbourhood mobilisations, and the specific traditions of struggles in the Global South.” —Edward Webster, University of Witwatersrand, South Africa

The Political System of Brazil

The Political System of Brazil
Author: Dana de la Fontaine
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 421
Release: 2015-10-27
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 364240023X

This volume presents in-depth insights into the polity, politics and policies of the Brazilian political system. It reassesses the processes of change since the country's return to democracy in the 1980s, in the light of autocratic societal structures and suboptimal institutional design, on the one hand, and the political and economic achievements observed, on the other. In their contributions, top Brazilian and international scholars critically examine the development of the political system with a focus on the Lula and Rousseff administrations, and place their actions and failures in the socio-political and economic context so as to uncover the underlying institutional structures, constellations and diverging interests of actors on various decision-making levels and in different political fields. It is the central aim of this book to present a differentiated portrait of the current political landscape and remaining contradictions in Latin America's largest country.

The Political Construction of Business Interests

The Political Construction of Business Interests
Author: Cathie Jo Martin
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 329
Release: 2012-03-30
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1107018668

The Political Construction of Business Interests recounts employers' struggles to define their collective social identities at turning points in capitalist development.

Brazil

Brazil
Author: Riordan Roett
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2016-07-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 019022455X

Brazil is one of the most important but puzzling countries in the world. A nation of 200 million people, it has vast natural resource reserves, rich cultural traditions, a middle class undergoing explosive growth, and social welfare policies that are models for much of the world ('la bolsa familia,' which provides a guaranteed income to poor families). And, after decades of authoritarian rule, it is a stable democracy. Yet it is beset by problems that no other advanced economy suffers from: staggeringly high crime rates, sky-high inequality levels, and endemic political corruption. Emblematic of these two sides of Brazil is the selection of Rio as site of both the next Summer Olympics and the next World Cup. While the choice of Rio for these events points to Brazil's expanding presence on the world stage, so far the construction and planning for the events have been disastrous, threatening to deeply embarrass the nation. In Brazil: What Everyone Needs to Know®, Riordan Roett, an eminent scholar of Brazil and Latin America, will provide a rich overview of Brazil, covering Brazilian society, politics, culture, and the economy. The book begins with a series of chapters on Brazilian history, beginning with the pre-colonial period and moving on, in succession, to the long era of Portuguese rule, the birth of independent Brazil, the emergence of modern Brazil in the 1930s, the era of the dictators, and - finally - to the democratic regime that came into being in the 1980s. Throughout the book, Roett will focus sharply on the fault lines -- racial, economic, political, and cultural - that have plagued Brazil from its beginnings to this day. As the 2016 World Cup and Summer Olympics approach, interest in Brazil is sure to rise. Roett's synthesis will provide interested readers with an accessible, authoritative overview of this troubled yet fascinating giant.

Transforming Brazil

Transforming Brazil
Author: Rafael R. Ioris
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 281
Release: 2014-05-09
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1317680030

In this book, Rafael R. Ioris critically revisits the postwar context in Brazil to reexamine traditional questions and notions pertaining to the nature of Latin America’s political culture and institutions. It was in this period that the region lived some of its most intense and successful experiences of fast economic growth, which was paradoxically marred by heightened ideological divisions, political disruptions, and the emergence of widespread authoritarian rule. Combining original sources of political, diplomatic, intellectual, cultural, and labor histories, Ioris provides a comprehensive history of the fruitful debates concerning national development in postwar Brazil, a time when the so-called country of the future faced one of its best moments for consolidating political democracy and economic prosperity. He argues that traditional views on political instability have been excessively grounded on an institutional focus, which should be replaced by in-depth analysis of events on the ground. In so doing, he reveals that as national development meant very different things to multiple different social segments of the Brazilian society, no unified support could have been provided to the democratically elected political regime when things rapidly became socially and politically divisive early in the 1960s. Innovating in its multidimensional analytical scope and interdisciplinary focus, Transforming Brazil provides a rich political, cultural, and intellectual examination of a historical period characterized by rapid socio-economic changes amidst significant political instability and the heightened ideological polarization shaping the political scenario of Brazil and much of Latin America in the Cold War era.

Slave Emancipation and Transformations in Brazilian Political Citizenship

Slave Emancipation and Transformations in Brazilian Political Citizenship
Author: Celso Thomas Castilho
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
Total Pages: 274
Release: 2016-09-03
Genre: History
ISBN: 0822981386

Celso Thomas Castilho offers original perspectives on the political upheaval surrounding the process of slave emancipation in postcolonial Brazil. He shows how the abolition debates in Pernambuco transformed the practices of political citizenship and marked the first instance of a mass national political mobilization. In addition, he presents new findings on the scope and scale of the opposing abolitionist and sugar planters' mobilizations in the Brazilian northeast. The book highlights the extensive interactions between enslaved and free people in the construction of abolitionism, and reveals how Brazil's first social movement reinvented discourses about race and nation, leading to the passage of the abolition law in 1888. It also documents the previously ignored counter-mobilizations led by the landed elite, who saw the rise of abolitionism as a political contestation and threat to their livelihood. Overall, this study illuminates how disputes over control of emancipation also entailed disputes over the boundaries of the political arena and connects the history of abolition to the history of Brazilian democracy. It offers fresh perspectives on Brazilian political history and on Brazil's place within comparative discussions on slavery and emancipation.

Routledge Handbook of Brazilian Politics

Routledge Handbook of Brazilian Politics
Author: Barry Ames
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 788
Release: 2018-10-25
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1134848285

With contributions from leading international scholars, this Handbook offers the most rigorous and up-to-date analyses of virtually every aspect of Brazilian politics, including inequality, environmental politics, foreign policy, economic policy making, social policy, and human rights. The Handbook is divided into three major sections: Part 1 focuses on mass behavior, while Part 2 moves to representation, and Part 3 treats political economy and policy. The Handbook proffers five chapters on mass politics, focusing on corruption, participation, gender, race, and religion; three chapters on civil society, assessing social movements, grass-roots participation, and lobbying; seven chapters focusing on money and campaigns, federalism, retrospective voting, partisanship, ideology, the political right, and negative partisanship; five chapters on coalitional presidentialism, participatory institutions, judicial politics, and the political character of the bureaucracy, and eight chapters on inequality, the environment, foreign policy, economic and industrial policy, social programs, and human rights. This Handbook is an essential resource for students, researchers, and all those looking to understand contemporary Brazilian politics.