ABSTRACT
Based on a comparative analysis and mobilization of the literature on political science, economics, and political economy of development, this article analyzes the relations between the Brazilian state, economic bureaucracy, industrial entrepreneurship, and financial capitalism in two similar development strategies, but processed in antipodal political regimes: the authoritarian national developmentalism (1974-1979) and the new democratic developmentalism (2011-2016). Results show that, in the first case, the II National Development Plan (II PND) consisted of a deliberate state action to structurally transform industrial capitalism and deepen import-substituting industrialization (ISI) from a development model based on structural change with debt. Such paradigm refutes the free-market ideology, but confronts the powerful interests of mainstream press and financial capitalism materialized in the “campaign against the nationalization of the economy.” In the second case, which marks the primacy of rent-seeking and unproductive financial capital - fruit of the profound changes in the international economy in the 1970s -, President Rousseff’s government tried to invert the traditional “distributive equation” in Brazil, based on the “privatization of gains” and “socialization of losses,” which dates back to presidents Vargas and Goulart. It also sought to reinforce the productive/industrializing development model but succumbed to the power of financial capital politically articulated a powerful liberal-conservative coalition that represented a socially regressive agenda seeking to destroy the foundations of the 1988 Federal Constitution. Both experiments show the structural obstacles imposed by the financial system to a long-term development strategy directed to the productive sector.
KEYWORDS:
development strategies; authoritarian national developmentalism; new democratic developmentalism; distributive conflict; Brazil