Brazilian Politics

Extract

Brazilian Politics, Alfred P. Montero, Cambridge: Polity Press, 2005, pp. 167.

Brazil is a country of contrasts. This is one of the first, and most ubiquitous, phrases that one encounters with respect to this intriguing country. Visitors to Brazil soon echo this sentiment as they note its cultural sophistication in the arts, technological expertise in a number of industries, its vast, diverse territory, as well as its extreme economic and social disparity. It is the ninth-largest economy in the world, yet it is also one of the most inequitable; the top 1 per cent of the population retains 40 per cent of the country's wealth (5). It is fitting then that this reality provides the integrative theme in Alfred Montero's primer on Brazilian politics. The topic is first introduced with an effective depiction of Brazilian president “Lula” da Silva as he struggles to bridge competing social and economic imperatives when he attends the World Social Forum held at Porto Alegre, Brazil, and the World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland. The text concludes with an observation that the president's adoption of a pragmatic agenda in order to secure economic growth through global markets will not adequately satisfy the desperate and immediate need for social reform where millions suffer and comparatively few prosper. Montero asserts that the root of this misery can be traced to the state's historic pattern of clientelistic politics, oligarchical rule and bureaucratic-authoritarianism (25).