publications

Transforming Brazil: An Era of Reform in Perspective, (Boulder, CO: Rowman and Littlefield, 2003).

Mauricio Font

Transforming Brazil explores the complex web of policies, ideas, institutions, social forces, and political actors behind recent Brazilian reforms. By placing them in a broader analytical framework, it sets the backdrop for a better understanding of the character, timing, and sequence of the reform process. The focus is on the complex reform efforts during the post-1985 democratization era. The introductory chapters place Brazilian reform in comparative perspective and explore theories and accounts of the political, social and institutional context in which the reforms took place, the political process leading up to reforms, and the actors that influenced them, including elites, business, government, institutions and interest groups.

The analysis of stabilization and economic liberalization weaves in accounts of policies and of Fernando Henrique Cardoso’s election as president in 1994 and his re-election in 1998. The detailed study of privatization, deregulation, trade liberalization and opening of the economy, state and administrative reform, agrarian reform, changes in social security system, fiscal reforms, and related reforms during the eight years of the Cardoso government show that they amount to a turning point in Brazilian politics, even if several reforms remain incomplete. The analysis also points to factors shaping the reform process and the relationship between the reforms and vulnerability to external financial crises and shocks.

Transforming Brazil explores the rise and flux of a restructured industrial economy, with expanding service and agricultural sectors. It traces social and economic indicators from the 70's to present, highlighting spatial and social differences. The chapter on social policy and collective action traces the history of the labor and landless movements. More broadly, it sheds light on how civil society and collective action influence agrarian reform and other reform process. The analysis also clarifies the nature of elite and popular support for the reform process. Business' cordial, tentative and sometimes accusatory relationship with the reforming government, leading up to and throughout the post-1994 reform process, is analyzed, together with business' newfound interest in social policy and philanthropy.

The volume assesses the extent to which this reform process represents a new development model or strategy and its relationship to democratization. The reform process has dismantled the statist regime in place since the Vargas' era and sets the stage for a new, liberalizing one inspired by Social Democratic ideas. The impact of government efforts on social, economic, and human development is assessed. This study closes with a thoughtful discussion of the relationship between reform and democracy and advances a structural realignment model to highlight the centrality of political processes in reform and development.

Contents:

1. A Reform Era in Perspective
2. From Stabilization to Economic Liberalization
3. State in Transition
4. Social Development and Collective Action
5. Elites and Reform
6. Toward a New Development Strategy
7. Democracy, Realignment, and Reform
Appendix A Stabilization Plans after 1985
Appendix B Fiscal Adjustment Packages
Appendix C Planning and Social Development
Appendix D Statistical Trends
Appendix E Regional Differences

Charting a New Course: The Politics of Globalization and Social Transformation, (Boulder, CO: Rowman and Littlefield, 2001).

Fernando Henrique Cardoso. Edited and Introduced by Mauricio Font.

The book contains 26 essays written by Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Brazil's President and world-class social scientist, at different stages of his impressive and influential intellectual trajectory. The book features an extensive Introduction by M. Font, and Cardoso's bibliography by Danielle Ardaillon. For decades F. H. Cardoso has been among the most influential of Latin American scholars, his writings on globalization, dependency, and politics have reached a world-wide audience. This book, the third by Cardoso to come out in English, is the first to incorporate essays written during his tenure as president of Brazil. The transformation of Cardoso's economic and political approach is nowhere better documented than in this broad-ranging collection of writings that span Cardoso's early theoretical work through his pragmatic agenda for Brazil in a rapidly changing world economy. The book also traces the development of one of the world's leading intellectuals, who took theory into the arena of policy when he became head of state.

Integración Económica y Democratización: América Latina y Cuba, (Chile: Colección Estudios Internacionales, 1998)

Editors: Pilar Álamos, Mauricio A. Font, José Augusto Guilhon Albuquerque, Francisco León

El libro trate de comprobar la vigencia de los temas y he las hipótesis de trabajo desarrolladas durante el Seminario Internacional "Integración Económica y Democratización: América Latina y Cuba", que se realizó en Santiago de Chile, el 26 y 27 de mayo de 1997. A partir de una caracterización del contexto en que tuvo lugar el intercambio de ideas y su evolución posterior, se analiza desde la primacía de la razón política que orienta la política interna e internacional cubana hasta la conveniencia de acelerar o pausar su participación en el proceso de integración latinoamericana y caribeña.