Publications

Detailed Information

브라질의 경제안정화: 영속적 실패의 정치경제학 : Economic Stabilization in Brazil: Political Economy of Repeated Failures

Cited 0 time in Web of Science Cited 0 time in Scopus
Authors

이영조

Issue Date
1991-12-25
Publisher
서울대학교 라틴아메리카연구소(SNUILAS)
Citation
Revista Iberoamericana, Vol.2, pp. 31-75
Abstract
This paper attempts from a political economy perspective to identify the

common factors underlying the ineffectiveness of the economic stabilization

policies tried under three different political regimes of Brazil: populist, military,

and redemocratized.

A rather careful examination of the ineffective or abortive stabilization efforts

reveals that at least three factors accounted for their failures. First

were the political restraints under which the policy-makers had to operate. Of

particular relevance to stabilization was the type of political legitimation all

three regimes relied much on: instrumental legitimation. All the regimes

under discussion tried, among other things, to gain and maintain legitimacy

by showing off their instrumentality in achieving the socially valued goods.

The populist and redemocratized regimes distributed state patronage to all the

politically relevant sectors and classes. The increasing commitments of the

state contri-buted to budget deficit, which in turn fueled inflation. The military

regime justified itself, among others, on the promise of better economic performance.

Instrumental legitimation restricted the mode and scope of

antiinflationary policies and the finetuning of the policies in the process of implementation.

For example, downsizing of the fat state bureaucracy, reduction

of the subsidies and transfers, selloff of inefficient state enterprises were

largely outside the policy options under the two democratic regimes. Under

the military regime(perhaps under all regimes because the continued state patronage presu-pposed an increasing economic pie), any stabilization policy inimical

to economic growth was out of the question. Thus, whenever forced to

choose between the alternatives of recession and inflation or stabilization and

growth, Brazil consistently chose the first options.

Second, in all failures were visible schisms in the dominant bloc concerning

the development strategy and the foreign economic relations. Although they

were starker in the late populist and the redemocratized regimes, they were

there even under the seemingly monolithic military regime. These schisms obviously

impaired the policy consistency and the ability to respond in time to

the new problems emerging in the course of policy implementation.

Third, in all cases of failure the organized interests displayed a common pattern

of behavior. Particularly, organized labor and the capitalists were more

intent on maintaining and increasing their own share of the economic pie than

trying to solve problems through compromises and concession. No doubt, the

end result of this distributional struggle was failure of stabilization which

exacted more sacrifices than otherwise would.

The only exception to the general pattern outlined above was stabilization

in the early period of the military rule(l964~73). Enjoying a degree of "retrospective

legitimacy" in reaction to the chaos of the late populist period and

largely free, if for a time, from the particular interests of the civil society

through coercive political exclusion, the state could implement more effectively

stabilization programs more orthodox in their content than any other stabilization

program in postwar Brazil. The real test of the military regime's ability

and commitment to stabilize occurred only after the Oil Shock and the defeat

in the 1974 election changed the political and economic terrain of the

country. Faced with a choice of stabilization and inflation, the state opted for

inflation with growth at the expense of stabilization with recession.
ISSN
1598-7779
Language
Korean
URI
https://hdl.handle.net/10371/69469
Files in This Item:
Appears in Collections:

Altmetrics

Item View & Download Count

  • mendeley

Items in S-Space are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.

Share