State-society cycles and political pacts in a national-dependent society: Brazil

Abstract

The history of independent Brazil may be divided into three major state-society cycles, and, after 1930, five political pacts or class coalitions can be identified. These pacts were nationalist; only in the 1990s did the Brazilian elites surrender to neoliberal hegemony. Yet since early in the twenty-first century they have been rediscovering the idea of the nation. The main claim of this essay is that Brazilian elites and Brazilian society are 'national-dependent,' that is, they are ambivalent and contradictory, requiring an oxymoron to define them. They are dependent because they often consider themselves 'Europeans' and the mass of the people as inferior. But Brazil is big enough, and there are many common interests around its domestic market, to make the Brazilian nation less ambivalent. Today the country is seeking a synthesis between the last two political cycles between social justice and economic development in the framework of democracy.