Organized Business Politics in Democratic Brazil

n May 1996 Brazil's National Confederation of Industry (CNI) convened a meeting of industrialists in Brasilia for a mass show of unity and focused lobbying in favor of constitutional reform. Industrialists large and small heeded the call. Nearly three thousand of them from all over Brazil chartered planes and packed shuttles. Fortified by a morning of speeches demanding constitutional reforms, the industrialists fanned out over Brasilia in the afternoon to argue their case to members of the national congress. As if to demonstrate that it could not be intimidated, however, Congress chose that very afternoon to vote down a reform proposal backed by business. By the end of that year, it was clear that business had made little progress in pushing several amendments it supported.