Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables and Figures
- Introduction: Renato Boschi and Carlos Henrique Santana
- Part I Development, Macroeconomic Policies and Varieties of Capitalism
- Part II Political Culture, Identity Politics and Political Contention
- Part III Ideas and the Role of Elites and Advocacy Networks: Translating and Legitimating the Frontiers of Institutional Reforms
- Part IV Economic Reforms, Public Policies and Development
- Chapter 11 Development and Citizenship in the Semi-periphery: Reflecting on the Brazilian Experience
- Chapter 12 The Periphery Paradox in Innovation Policy: Latin America and Eastern Europe Compared
Chapter 13 - The Lula Government and the Social Democratic Experience in Brazil
from Part IV - Economic Reforms, Public Policies and Development
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 July 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables and Figures
- Introduction: Renato Boschi and Carlos Henrique Santana
- Part I Development, Macroeconomic Policies and Varieties of Capitalism
- Part II Political Culture, Identity Politics and Political Contention
- Part III Ideas and the Role of Elites and Advocacy Networks: Translating and Legitimating the Frontiers of Institutional Reforms
- Part IV Economic Reforms, Public Policies and Development
- Chapter 11 Development and Citizenship in the Semi-periphery: Reflecting on the Brazilian Experience
- Chapter 12 The Periphery Paradox in Innovation Policy: Latin America and Eastern Europe Compared
Summary
Introduction
In this chapter I will propose a few lines of reflection on the current partisan political struggle in Brazil and how this can be read in the light of international experience of contention between liberals and social democrats.
Many wonder why the PT and the PSDB/ DEM coalition have been the most successful options in recent presidential elections in Brazil. Indeed, no matter how complex the political life in modern societies may seem, there is basically a single and fundamental cleavage which pits electorally viable political forces against each other in nations structured according to the dictates of the capitalist order: the political actors who organize around the social democratic movement and the actors that organize around the liberal movement. The replication of this ideological divide is expressed in the famous ideological left-right continuum along which parties, leaders, voters, interest groups and opinion leaders seek to position themselves or somehow are inevitably drawn into. The point here is not exactly to determine, for example, whether or not the Partido Social Democratica Brasileiro (PSDB) is a liberal or genuinely social democratic association, but rather to point out that starting in the 1990s with the introduction of market-oriented reforms in Brazil, the PSDB in association with the former Partido da Frente Liberal (PFL) renamed the Democrats (DEM), has become the most competitive and reliable option for voters with rightist or center-right inclinations.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Development and Semi-PeripheryPost-Neoliberal Trajectories in South America and Central Eastern Europe, pp. 305 - 326Publisher: Anthem PressPrint publication year: 2012