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The Brazilian Political System: Trends and Perspectives*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

Celso Lafer
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Extract

IN 1964 THE BRAZILIAN POLITICAL SYSTEM UNDERWENT A basic change. The populist republic (1946–64), which had paved the way for both a formal and an informal extension of political and economic franchises, after the success of Kubitschek's administration (1956–61) and Quadros's resignation (1961), collapsed as a result of decisional paralysis. The economic challen e of accumulation and the political challenge of social justice led, in the early 1960s during the Goulart administration, both to a fragmentation of power and to radicalization. The more demands multiplied, the more the government hesitated, feeding the anxiety of different political grou s in society. The result was a growing distrust of the politicafsystem. Distrust in turn not only prevented a coalition in support of a consistent governmental programme but also brought about an intensification of conflictual demands. This self-sustaining mechanism of decisional paralysis was interrupted by the emergence of what has been called by Juan Linz and Guuermo O'Donnell ‘a bureaucratic-authoritarian regime’.

Type
Articles
Information
Government and Opposition , Volume 19 , Issue 2 , 01 April 1984 , pp. 178 - 187
Copyright
Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 1984

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References

1 Cf. O’Donnell, Guillermo, Linz, Juan et al., O Estado Autoritário e Movimentos Populares, Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra, 1980 Google Scholar. For recent developments in research cf, Wanderley Guilherme Dos Santos, ‘Autoritarismo e Após: Convergěncias e Divergěncias entre Brasil e Chile’ and Garretón, Manuel Antonio, ‘Em Torno da Discussäo sobre os Novos Regimes Autoritários na América Latina’, both in Dados, vol. 25, No. 2, 1982, pp. 151–63, and 165–87Google Scholar.

2 Cf. Bobbio, Norberto, La Teoria delle Forme di Governo nella Storia del Pensiero Politico, Turin, Giappichelli, 1976 Google Scholar; ‘La Resistenza all’Oppresione, Oggi’, Studi Sassaresi ‐ III ‐ Autonomia e Diritto di Resistenza, Academic Year 1970‐1971, pp. 15–31.

3 Cf. Bobbio, Norberto, La Ideologia e il Potere in Crisi, Florence, Mounier, 1981, pp. 3–21 Google Scholar.

4 Cf. Arendt, Hannah, The Origins of Totalitarianism (new edition with added prefaces), New York, Harcourt, Brace Jovanovich, 1973 Google Scholar, Part III ‐Chaps. 11 and 12.

5 On this issue, for theoretical considerations cf. Deutsch, Karl W., ‘On the Learning Capacity of Large Political Systems’, Chap. 6 of Information for Action: From Knowledge to Wisdom, New York, Academic Press, Inc., 1975, pp. 61–83 Google Scholar.

6 Cf. Hirschman, Albert O., Exit, Voice and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations and States, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1970 Google Scholar; Essays in Trespassing ‐ Economics to Politics and Beyond, Cambridge, Mass, Cambridge University Press, 1981, pp. 211–65.

7 Cf. Deutsch, Karl W., The Nerves of Government, N. York, Free Press, 1966 Google Scholar, Chap. 13.

8 Arendt, Hannah in Hannah Arendt: The Recovery of the Public World, edited by Hill, Melvyn A., N. York, St Martin’s Press, 1979. p. 317 Google Scholar.