ABSTRACT
In the center of the present crisis of the Brazilian economy and society is the crisis of the State. To understand this crisis, this paper makes a revision of the nature and the role of the Brazilian State in the present and in the past. The paper argues that in peripheral capitalism, like Brazilian, the State has played different roles and has produced different effects as compared to the State of developed countries. Here the State is not only an essential and fundamental component of the process of capital accumulation but has difficulty playing the role of arbiter of class conflicts and competition between different interest groups. Among other things, the nature of the Brazilian State has produced and reproduced increasing inequality and structural heterogeneity.
KEYWORDS:
Role of government; privatization