Brazil: The Road to Democracy

Abstract

In the last 25 years, the democratic issue has dominated the agenda of Brazilian political science. After two decades of military rule and past frustrations in democratizing the political order, the successes and failures of the ongoing demo cratic experience have mobilized the attention of scholars and policy-oriented analysts. Many of the publications on the subject have not had a long lasting impact, being too centered on transient contextual factors. This is not the case for the books that we examine here. We look at two publications that contribute from distinctive angles to a clearer understanding of diverse aspects of Brazilian politics. The first publication is the volume edited by Ranulfo Melo and Alcantara Saez, which provides a broad overview of the performance of democracy in the country. The interplay among the powers, the party system, electoral behavior, and new forms of participation are some of the many dimensions under scrutiny. The second book under consideration is an appraisal of the new terms of interaction between the State and market in the process of consolidation. Renato Boschi and Eli Diniz focus on the new model under construction, one that takes the country away from the classic state-led growth model inaugurated in the 1930s, as well as from the neoliberal one that later became the cooking recipe advertised for the developing world.