The title of Stefan Zweig's 1941 book Brazil: A Land of the Future captured an age-old Brazilian notion with roots in the colonial period. The country's vast land mass and bountiful resources, so the widely held belief goes, portend a propitious future for the continent-sized country. Cynics, however, like to quip that “Brazil is the land of the future, and it always will be.” This important volume on recent political and economic transformations in Brazil rejects that pessimistic prediction and forcefully insists that despite bumps in the road, the country is, indeed, on the way to sustainable development that will take full advantage of the nation's riches to offer greater prosperity for all.Analysts, including the authors of this collection, have argued that the center-right government of Fernando Henrique Cardoso (1995–2003), and that of his center-left successor, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (2003–10), set Brazil on a course toward economic and political development. Many have insisted that there was more continuity than change in the programs and policies of the two administrations and that it was merely the scale of the different social benefit safety nets and Lula's charisma and communication skills that explain his popularity, in spite of early scandals such as the mensalão vote-buying affair. The export commodities boom of the last decade, many posit, also contributed significantly to Lula's record-breaking approval rating. However, the authors of this volume contend that it is actually the widespread belief in politics of social inclusion coupled with sound orthodox fiscal and economic policies that are the crucial factors in the recent optimistic assessment of the country's future potential.According to this perspective, nationalist developmentalism, which was the hallmark of economic policies during the military dictatorship (1964–85) and relied on state-run industrialization based on foreign indebtedness, failed in its goals. The withdrawal of support by industrial and banking sectors marked the demise of the regime. During the process of democratization, policies of social inclusion coupled with the sharp rise in inflation initially provoked a political crisis that was overcome with Cardoso's economic stabilization plan and an expansion of social programs that were based on solid economic and fiscal policies, which continued when Lula came to the presidency in 2003. While acknowledging the possibilities that ideology, conjunctural economic opportunities, interest group pressure, or Lula's personality might explain the noted shift to lower levels of inequality and higher redistribution rates, the authors insist that a societal shift toward supporting policies of social inclusion, which have become institutionalized and embraced by the middle classes, is the foundation for sustainable development.This book was published on the eve of President Dilma Rousseff's impeachment. Therefore, it cannot be faulted for being unable to predict the new policies and actions of Michel Temer's presidency. Yet recent events will inevitably lead the reader to wonder if the authors' model still holds. Social scientists disagree about the nature of the 2013 mobilizations. Protests articulated diverse demands ranging from a call to fulfill and expand the social services promises (health, education, and transportation) of the Lula-Dilma governments to demands for the end of the Workers' Party's time in power. By 2015, the mass street demonstrations took on another character. The outcry against the Petrobras kickback and corruption schemes and a systematic campaign for the impeachment of the president seemed to dovetail with upper-middle-class repudiation of the social inclusion programs that the authors of this volume insist are at the core of Brazil's new belief consensus. At the time the anti-Rousseff protests were seen as a particularly Brazilian phenomenon. However, the worldwide wave of right-wing movements coming to power this last year casts a new shadow on our understanding of those events. Is the Temer government a momentary shift to the right, or does it reflect an international trend with Brazilian manifestations?Minor errors, such as placing President Artur da Costa e Silva's stroke and the transition to the Emílio Garrastazú Médici presidency in 1968 rather than in 1969 and asserting that “strikes by workers [and] student protests” were a result of Institutional Act No. 5 rather than among the many triggers of the December 1968 decree, notwithstanding, the volume's historical summary of the military regime's economic policies is laudable (p. 63). The authors develop a much more variegated analysis of the authoritarian period that goes beyond the moderate / hard line binary, which has oversimplified many analyses about the dynamics of different political forces battling among the ruling generals. Whether the authors' predictions hold up about the sustainability of a new belief system that continues to favor social inclusion remains to be seen.
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Open Access
May 8, 2018
Tom Winterbottom 
