Two periods of Brazilian neoliberalism as city government

Abstract

Abstract This article discusses two different phases of neoliberalism as city government practice in Brazil: the first one as progressive neoliberalism and the second as authoritarian, austere, and militarized management of social collapse. In the first part of the text, I use the works of Christian Laval and Pierre Dardot (2009 [2013] and 2016) and Dardot et. al (2021) to inscribe the proposed debate in the transition between two expressions of neoliberalism, initially as world reason or political rationality and later as war strategy. In the second part, such phases will be observed through recent transformations in city government practices, using some examples related to the latest housing and land regularization programs.