International thought in the Lula era

Raúl Bernal-Meza

doi:10.1590/s0034-73292010000300012

Abstract

In the last fifty years, Brazil began a rapid process of structural transformation, following the first stage of industrial development in the 1930s. Currently the country integrates the small group of countries which evolved from an initial peripheral and subordinate insertion dating back to the nineteenth century, part of the most dynamic segment of the semiperiphery. But this category, intermediate between the "maturity" and "backwardness", according Modernization theorists, or between the "center" and "periphery", as theorists of the Dependence defend, has undergone a process of overcoming considerable positive progress in the direction of the group of states that dominate the current world system. In this way, during the years 2003-2010, foreign policy, along with the formulation of a new regionalism as a strategy of global integration and a new ideal model of State, has been a key factor

Highlights

To other governmental enterprises, President Lula da Silva’s administration was part of the governmental renewal process, economic model shaping of foreign policy and international integration strategies that characterized the transition of most Latin American countries between the end of the twentieth and early twenty-first century
Politics were the response of national societies to the crisis caused by the neoliberal model and the implementation of public policies according to ideological and fundamentalist vision of the globalization1, which included the transfer of national assets to transnational capital, the unilateral opening of economies, deregulation of markets;in general, a policy of submission was perceived and, in some cases, “servitude” to the United States and central capitalism
The difference with other countries is that Brazil has the attributes in terms of geography, economics, demographics and cultural challenge to apply to that part of the group formed by central actors in the contemporary international system

Summary

Introduction

To other governmental enterprises, President Lula da Silva’s administration was part of the governmental renewal process, economic model shaping of foreign policy and international integration strategies that characterized the transition of most Latin American countries between the end of the twentieth and early twenty-first century. Of all the debates that occurred during those years, a central point to understand President Lula’s foreign policy would be discussions between singlepole and multiple-pole and discussions with those who sought to impose certain views on globalization; on this debate present were a few lines of the Latin American structuralist tradition, as old “dependentists” (Dos Santos), those that addressed cultural perspective (Ortiz), and some “neo-structuralist” (Ferrer, Ianni) Among the latter new contributions from the periphery to the discussions on the contemporary stage of historical capitalism would be found, with authors such as Tomassini, Ferrer, Rapoport, Bernal-Meza, representatives of the Chilean Academy and, predominantly, of the Argentine scholars , most of whom would have a strong positive impact on Brazil

The Latin American scene

Conclusions