Book Review, "Mystifying the Brazilian Northeast" by Ronald H. Chilcote

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Mystifying the Brazilian Northeast 
by Ronald H. Chilcote

Durval Muniz de Albuquerque Jr. "The Invention of the Brazilian Northeast."
Foreword by James N Green.
Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014.

Abstract, "The Necessary, the Possible, and the Impossible: A Post-Presidential Interview with Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva" by Emir Sader, Pablo Gentili

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The Necessary, the Possible, and the Impossible: A Post-Presidential Interview with Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva 
by Emir Sader and Pablo Gentili

A book about the 10 years of an administration that has profoundly transformed Brazil cannot avoid giving a word to its principal protagonist, the person without whom this process would not have been possible and certainly would not have achieved so great a success. Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is a practical and intuitive statesman who seeks concrete solutions to problems. It has been in good measure due to this ability that Brazil has witnessed a political achievement that has made possible to the prioritizing of social aims, the attainment of egalitarian policies, the assertion of Brazilian sovereignty abroad, and the recovery of an active role for the state in creating rights for its citizenry.

Abstract, Commentary: Rejoinder by Armando Boito and Alfredo Saad-Filho

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Rejoinder 
by Armando Boito and Alfredo Saad-Filho

Our article provides a class analysis of Brazilian society, examines the (changing) structures of political representation in the country, and explains the institutional conflicts during the federal administrations led by the PT. We argue that those conflicts express, in complex and mediated ways, disputes between classes and fractions within the dominant power bloc. Our analysis is carefully supported by examples drawn from the sugarcane-ethanol chain, Petrobras, the Brazilian Develoment Bank, the judiciary, the Federal Police, the mainstream media, and the recent corruption scandals.

Abstract, Commetary: Brazilian Left Bonapartism and the Rise of Finance Capital: A Critique of the Internal-Bourgeoisie Thesis by Jawdat Abu-El-Haj

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Brazilian Left Bonapartism and the Rise of Finance Capital: A Critique of the Internal-Bourgeoisie Thesis 
by Jawdat Abu-El-Haj

Boito and Saad-Filho interpret the rise and fall of the power bloc that has sustained Brazil’s PT governments in the tradition of Poulantzas’s work on classes, class struggle, and the state. They consider the Brazilian state to be the main arena in which classes manifest their interests and power to influence economic outcomes. As did Poulantzas, they fall into the trap of structural determinism, in which collective choices and actions are derived mechanistically from fixed social spaces. I disagree with their thesis that the PT administrations represented an internal-bourgeoisie power bloc in an alliance with the middle classes and the popular masses and instead describe those administrations, especially under Lula, as left Bonapartist. The federal government under them exhibited greater autonomy from the bourgeoisie because of positive economic indicators such as a large trade surplus through commodities exports, the expansion of incoming foreign direct investment, and the capitalization of state-controlled pension funds. The increasing fiscal efficiency of the state led the government to amass unprecedented financial power.

Abstract, "State, State Institutions, and Political Power in Brazil" by Armando Boito and Alfredo Saad-Filho

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State, State Institutions, and Political Power in Brazil 
by Armando Boito and Alfredo Saad-Filho

The political conflicts during the Workers’ Party administrations led by Luís Inácio Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff have been driven by disputes between two fractions of the country’s bourgeoisie: the internal and the internationalized bourgeoisie. Their ideologies, policies, institutions, and forms of political representation have determined government policies and outcomes. These processes have unfolded within an authoritarian democracy whose structures have not been challenged by the party. The party’s limited power and continuing timidity have produced an aggressive reaction by the internationalized bourgeoisie and the upper middle class, leading to a severe crisis in the administration of President Dilma Rousseff.

Abstract, "Legal Dualism and the Bipolar State: Challenges to Indigenous Human Rights in Brazil" by Cecília MacDowell Santos

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Legal Dualism and the Bipolar State: Challenges to Indigenous Human Rights in Brazil 
by Cecília MacDowell Santos/span>

The Brazilian state has contradictory laws, policies and practices with regard to the rights of indigenous peoples. Despite the adoption of a democratic Brazilian constitution in 1988 that incorporated a multicultural conception of indigenous rights and the subsequent ratification of new international norms of human rights for indigenous peoples, the practices of the courts and of the various sectors of the state reflect a legal cultural dualism and a “bipolar” state. The case of the Xucuru people sent to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights shows the conflicts between legal and political cultures characterized, on one hand, by an individualistic and colonial approach to indigenous civil rights and, on the other hand, a collectivist and multicultural perspective on the human rights of indigenous peoples.

Abstract, "Sanitaristas, Petistas, and the Post-Neoliberal Public Health State in Porto Alegre" by Christopher L. Gibson

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Sanitaristas, Petistas, and the Post-Neoliberal Public Health State in Porto Alegre 
by Christopher L. Gibson

Scholars of the post-neoliberal state in Latin America commonly trace universal social policies to ruling left parties and deepened democracy. Yet, such accounts often overlook how subnational politics in highly decentralized democracies like Brazil’s can mediate this relationship. Examining such politics in the Brazilian município of Porto Alegre since 1988 suggests that structural constraints and competing programmatic agendas of Partido dos Trabalhadores (Workers’ Party—PT) governments complicated expansion of the public health sector. The município’s surprisingly modest delivery of such services is traceable to enduring deemphasis on critical dimensions of state building in this sector by several PT administrations and the integration of civil society actors into multiple participatory governance institutions with little power over this process. Even in such contexts, far-reaching participatory democratic institutions are no panacea for fulfilling the universal social policy ambitions of local post-neoliberal states that depend heavily upon high-level political appointees for their effectiveness.

Abstract, "Is the Brazilian State 'Patrimonial'?" by Anthony W. Pereira

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Is the Brazilian State “Patrimonial”? 
by Anthony W. Pereira

Patrimonialism is ubiquitous in the analysis of the state in Brazil, a country in which the concept has its own distinctive genealogy. However, patrimonialism has been subject to severe conceptual stretching, limiting its usefulness in comparative analysis. Furthermore, the “commanding heights” of the federal bureaucracy have become more universalistic and merit-based and less patrimonial over the past few years. Patrimonialism is therefore best viewed as one logic among many operating in the Brazilian state.

Abstract, "New Forms of Environmental Governance in São Paulo: Implications for Human Rights" by LaDawn Haglund

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New Forms of Environmental Governance in São Paulo: Implications for Human Rights 
by LaDawn Haglund

The democratic transition and constitutional reforms in Brazil raised hopes that critical environmental challenges and egregious social deficits could finally be remedied through law, but political and legal legacies, fragmentation among actors, and disarticulation between and within institutions and between the state and citizens have complicated this transformation. Examination of the emerging role of the courts and the law in promoting social rights and environmental protection in the water and sanitation sectors in São Paulo reveals how long-standing urban problems are reified or altered through legal means. It also shows that ongoing challenges have prompted a search for new, proactive strategies of coordination, tested old assumptions about state/society relationships, and provoked broader conversations about difficult socioeconomic and political questions at the heart of creating sustainable, just societies.

Abstract, "The Bolsa Família Program: Replacing Politics with Biopolitics" by Rémi Fernand Lavergne and Bernadete Beserra

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The Bolsa Família Program: Replacing Politics with Biopolitics 
by Rémi Fernand Lavergne and Bernadete Beserra

The Bolsa Família Program is the flagship of Brazil’s targeted public policies. It exemplifies a particular approach to the public management of alterity, an approach that reveals a state more preoccupied with rationalizing public expenditures and building social peace than with policies oriented toward income distribution, democratization, and the expansion of social rights. The program is a form of biopolitics, inscribed in a framework aimed at the normalization, regimentation, and control of the population that receives the benefit. Lifelong social assistance and education are important instruments of subjectivation and the production of subjectivities with an eye to influencing the conduct of indigent and marginalized populations. The goal is to influence the conduct of indigent and marginalized populations and, in a movement quite the reverse of the touted “inclusion,” to separate them more and more from the citizenship that the program advertises and promises.

Abstract, "State-Society Dynamics in Contemporary Brazilian Land Reform" by Wendy Wolford

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State-Society Dynamics in Contemporary Brazilian Land Reform 
by Wendy Wolford

Over the past 15 years, land reform has returned from the “dustbin of history” to serve again as a viable policy option. Much has been written about its resurgence, with the research tending to focus narrowly on the role of prices, policies, and politics in shaping the design and outcome of distribution. While these are necessary elements to understand, their reification neglects the critical element of process. Land reform programs are implemented by an array of government actors and negotiated on the ground by beneficiaries, social movement activists, large farmers, and the general public. A messy assemblage of actors and interests shapes both the design and the outcome of distribution. Qualitative analysis of the federal agency in charge of land reform in Brazil, the Instituto Nacional de Colonização e Reforma Agrária (National Institute of Colonization and Agrarian Reform—INCRA), reveals that, in the context of increased citizen participation and reduced funding, the agency must work together with social movement activists to perform its task. The analysis suggests that the study of state-society relations today requires a new vocabulary that highlights substance and process rather than form.

Abstract, "The Role of Policy Makers in the Formulation and Implementation of Public Policy for Brazilian Agriculture" by Sergio Pereira Leite

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The Role of Policy Makers in the Formulation and Implementation of Public Policy for Brazilian Agriculture 
by Sergio Pereira Leite

A processual approach to public policy analysis rather than the more common instrumental one can help us to understand the experience of policy makers involved in government programs related to rural Brazil and to evaluate the extent to which the implementation of rural policy is influenced by the networks and institutional environments in which administrators are engaged. A broader analytical framework for agrarian and agricultural policies, particularly those implemented during the two terms of the Lula administration (2003–2010), can be arrived at by examining the strategic political games in which public administrators were involved, the different forums in which these games were institutionalized (the spaces in which rural policies are created and implemented), and the institutional environments that structured and regulated the creation of these policies.

Abstract, "Development Models for the Brazilian Countryside: Paradigmatic and Territorial Disputes" by Bernardo Mançano Fernandes

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Development Models for the Brazilian Countryside: Paradigmatic and Territorial Disputes 
by Bernardo Mançano Fernandes

Problems of land use and ownership result from the inequalities caused by the hegemonic form of capitalism, agribusiness. A possible alternative model has yet to be worked out, and there is a fundamental need to reflect on the struggle against the hegemony of capitalism and how to safeguard the interests of the peasantry. From this perspective, the agrarian question should be considered as a conflict between those favoring the interests of the peasantry and family farming and those favoring agribusiness. A paradigmatic debate about the roles of the Brazilian state, agribusiness, and the peasant movements in formulating public policy shows that the potential for the peasantry to grow food is threatened by the concentration of power, landownership, capital, technology, and wealth. Unless there is a change in the development model, the prospect is increasing inequality. The experiment with having two government ministries for agriculture is an important step in the shaping of policies to support family farming.

Abstract, "Toward the Worker State, or Working for the State? Reorganization of Political Antagonisms in the Brazilian Amazon" by Brenda Baletti

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Toward the Worker State, or Working for the State? Reorganization of Political Antagonisms in the Brazilian Amazon 
by Brenda Baletti

The institutionalization of the Brazilian Workers’ Party has given rise to new tensions among emerging political actors, historic social movement mediator organizations, and the state. An analysis of the differences in strategies and practices between the Movement in Defense of Renascer and the Prainha Rural Worker’s Movement that emerged during the creation of the Renascer Extractive Reserve in the Lower Amazon highlights the fact that the movement’s emancipatory impulses indicate a break with the politics-as-usual of the union and the Workers’ Party more broadly. An examination of union political discourses and practices that seek to fold these emancipatory impulses back into the dominant logic indicates that the union continues to perform the work of the state—albeit a reconstituted one—both institutionally and effectively.

Abstract, Deconstructing the Post-Neoliberal State: Intimate Perspectives on Contemporary Brazil by Wendy Wolford and John D. French

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Deconstructing the Post-Neoliberal State: Intimate Perspectives on Contemporary Brazil 
by Wendy Wolford and John D. French

The last three presidential administrations in Brazil, including the two presidencies of Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva (2002–2010) and the first term of Dilma Rousseff (2010-2014), have complicated widely held understandings of the Brazilian state. It is no longer possible to characterize recent governments as simply authoritarian, patrimonial, or divorced from the experiences of the Brazilian public (see Pereira in this issue). The path to “deepening democracy” (Fung, Wright, and Abers, 2003) has not been an easy or straightforward one, as recent protests and ongoing corruption scandals have shown, and yet a brief history of the recent past illustrates dramatic change. In 1985 a 21-year dictatorship—what Peter Evans (1989) called a “developmental state”—was defeated only to be followed by debt-fueled crisis and a decade of economic stagnation. Hyperinflation and economic uncertainty led in turn to an era of neoliberal governance, including the privatization of state-owned enterprises, reduction of trade protections, and establishment of regional free-market zones (Baker, 2002; Corrales, 2012; Power, 1998; Wolford, 2005).