Continuity Through Change: Developmentalism and Neoliberalism in Democratic Brazil (1985-2018)

Abstract

Conventional wisdom claims that Brazilian economic governance underwent a sea-change over the three decades between the return to democracy and the election of 2018. Yet even during moments of intense reform, Brazil adopted a much more moderate and incremental approach than its Latin American peers, preserving the building blocks of the "developmental state." This paper charts the period from the 1980s to the end of 2018, which subtly shifted patterns and priorities of economic policy, but in many ways preserved its overall tenor and format. Changes arose more as a result of external or fiscal constraints than because of a clear consensus in favor of dismantling the developmental state; without such pressures, there is little reason to believe that reforms would have happened at all. Most of the changes of 1985-2018 generation, as a consequence, were in the direction of strengthening the state — increasing the autonomy of the bureaucracy, gaining control of the fiscal accounts, and imposing monetary authority — rather than in the direction of dramatically overhauling the developmental emphasis of that state. In consequence, while the density of policies may have changed, the contours of the developmental state remain, despite a generation of reforms.