Braz. political sci. rev.2022;16(2):e0001.
How Politics and Economics Work Together to Limit Development: Institutional Complementarities in Brazil
DOI: 10.1590/1981-3821202200020007
Few of the facts in ‘Decadent Developmentalism’ will be unfamiliar to even casual followers of Brazil’s political economy: the segmented labour markets that limit workers’ access to social protection; the ability of incumbent firms like JBS to extract resources from the government; or the role of the bureaucracy in taming the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Reliance on a consolidated block of evidence makes it all the more impressive that this book so dramatically reorients the reader’s understanding of Brazil’s development trajectory since 1985. Rather than simply extend the existing debate with more recent statistics, or niche case studies, the author deploys a broad swath of evidence within a new theoretical framework focused on the complementarities – the mutual supports – ‘between’ institutions, extracting much greater mileage from every data point.
At its core, ‘Decadent Developmentalism’ argues that this web of complementary institutions traps Brazil in a remarkably stable equilibrium – a rut so deep that swings from the committed left-wing administrations of the PT to the radical conservative populism of the Bolsonaro administration do little more than scratch the surface before they are co-opted, captured and corrupted into policy choices that have changed little since the 1988 constitution (and often long before). Not only is the deep state alive and well, it is also joined by a ‘deep market’ that works assiduously to maintain the current equilibrium.
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