A New Brazil Looming?

BUENOS AIRES HERALD - 06.12.2002 - FINANCE & ECONOMY

Brazil, dubbed for decades by many as a sleeping giant, continues to be a mistery - for Argentina's elite at least - according to Brazilian sociologist Renato Boschi of the Instituto Universitario de Pesquisas do Rio de Janeiro (UPERJ).

In Buenos Aires this week at the invitation of the PENT Foundation, Boschi, together with a team of colleagues from UPERJ, yesterday held a seminar for Argentine executives to talk about the recent changes in Brazil and the prospects for the future.

"Argentina's elite have a very hazy knowledge of how Brazil actually works," the Michigan University educated Boschi said.

With the selection of Ignacio Lula da Silva from the Worker's Party as Brazil's next president, there has been a radical shift away from traditional politics in Brazil.

"There is hope now that this new scenario will lead to a national project....where problems with the social structure will finally be fixed," Boschi stated.

Boschi identified this unbalanced social structure and the little training provided to the workforce in the past as the two key issues why Brazil had never quite lived up to the expectations of foreign investors of becoming a powerhouse in the world order.

"There has now been a change in the political discourse although there is still a fear of what may happen in six months after Lula's honeymoon period is over," Boschi stated.

Yet Boschi is optimistic that political change is underway in Brazil.

"There is some indication that a civic culture from grass-roots politics is taking hold which is a hope for the future," he commented, adding that there is a growing number of cases of government decentralization and civic participation.

Describing Brazil today, Boschi stated that the business sector has undergone a dramatic change in recent years, become more efficient, more "Americanized", using lobbying tools with Congress as is done in the US to push changes through. Even the State has changed, Boschi said, and rather than pulling out, has redefined its role of intervention.

Boschi went further to state that he sees the beginning of a virtuous cycle forming which if constantly fed with further positive policies should help the incoming government to move ahead with some of its key policies with a focus on poverty reduction and training.

On a more academic level Boschi says that the debate over "two Brazils" continues as there are "different realities depending on where you are in Brazil. The Brazil of Sao Paulo is vastly different from the Brazil of Manaus," Boschi pointed out.

Brazil has a unique system where municipalities are federal entities which receive state revenue in accordance with the criteria set out in the constitution. Some of the problems with policy implementation at this level that Boschi says will have to be tackled, are "patronage and oligarchism" among the elite which prevents changes being pushed through.

Other speakers at yesterday's event described the institutional matrix in Brazil and its dimension of governability; the State and the private sector in a post-reform scenario; the electoral and party system in Brazil, and new social structures and mobility.

Por Peter Johnson
(Herald Staff)