Description: Brazil features regularly in global comparisons of large developing economies. Yet since the 1980s, the country has been caught in a low-level equilibrium, marked by lackluster growth and destructive inequality. One cause is the country's enduring commitment to a set of ideas and institutions labelled developmentalism. This book argues that developmentalism has endured, despite hyperactive reform, because institutional complementarities across economic and political spheres sustain and drive key actors and strategies that are individually advantageous, but collectively suboptimal. Although there has been incremental evolution in some institutions, complementarities across institutions sustain a pattern of 'decadent developmentalism' that swamps systemic change. Breaking new ground, Taylor shows how macroeconomic and microeconomic institutions are tightly interwoven with patterns of executive-legislative relations, bureaucratic autonomy, and oversight. His analysis of institutional complementarities across these five dimensions is relevant not only to Brazil but also to the broader study of comparative political economy.
Brief description: Matthew M. Taylor teaches at the School of International Service at American University. He is the author or co-editor of books on judicial politics, corruption, and foreign policy in Brazil. He has held fellowships at the Woodrow Wilson Center and the Council on Foreign Relations, and has lived extensively in Brazil, including serving as a faculty member at the University of São Paulo between 2006 and 2011.
Review Quotes: 'This is one of the most important books on Brazilian politics in recent decades. It provides a panoramic view of Brazil's political economy since 1985. It is essential reading for scholars and analysts of Brazil and of Latin American political economy...In sum, Decadent Developmentalism offers a rich analysis of Brazil's political economy under democracy, and it provides a clear answer to the question of why Brazil has not fared better since 1985.' Scott Mainwaring, Latin American Research Review