Decadent Developmentalism

Chapter 1 Introduction Brazil has been caught in a low-level economic equilibrium for much of the generation since the return to democracy in 1985. Over three and a half decades, Brazilian per capita income has grown more slowly than citizens' incomes in both wealthier developed nations as well as developing economies. The chaos of the late 2010s - including the worst recession in a century, massive corruption scandals, street demonstrations, and a presidential impeachment drama - underscored demands for change but led to few shifts in the incentives that drive actors toward this suboptimal equilibrium. The potential opportunity offered by these intertwined economic, legal, and political crises also proved insufficient, as of this writing, to significantly remake resilient political and economic structures. There is considerable agreement about the sources of Brazil's low-level equilibrium. But why does this consensus not translate into action? A long tradition of developmentalism, dating back seven decades, continues to exert enormous influence on the economy, wielded through dominant ideas about policy, reinforced by the institutions of policy implementation, and sustained by the interests that benefit from these institutional frameworks--