Um novo livro quase saíndo do forno, minha gente, bem a tempo de ser lido ainda antes do primeiro turno das eleições presidenciais.
Qualquer que seja o resultado dessas eleições, no primeiro ou no segundo turno, o livro se sustenta, pelo seu caráter menos conjunturalista, e mais estrutural e analítico.
Eis o esquema do livro, e o seu Prefácio e a Introdução.
Estou revisando algumas coisas, preparando o expediente, providenciando um ISBN e escolhendo a capa, com meu amigo Ted Goertzel, um brasilianista da velha escola (como eu, aliás).
Paulo Roberto de Almeida
The Drama of Brazilian Politics:
From Dom João to Marina Silva
Edited by:
Ted Goertzel and
Paulo Roberto de Almeida
Dedicated
to all Brazilians and their Foreign friends who are actively engaged in the
building up of a modern democratic nation.
Table of Contents
Introduction, by Ted Goertzel
1. The Drama of Brazilian Politics: from Dom
Pedro to Marina Silva, by Ted Goertzel
2. The Politics of Economic Regime Change
in Brazilian History, by Paulo
Roberto Almeida
3. The Brazilian Presidency from the Military
Regime to the Workers’ Party by João Paulo M. Peixoto
4. A Woman’s Place is in the Presidency:
Dilma, Marina and Women’s Representation in Brazil by Farida Jalalzai and
Pedro G. dos Santos.
5. A Brazilian ex-President’s Public Speech: A Threat to the Existing Order? By
Inês Signorini
6. Life without Turnstiles by Alipio de
Sousa Filho
7. The Changing Face of Brazilian Politics by
Sue Branford and Jan Rocha
8. Political Leadership and Protest in Brazil:
The 2013 Vinegar Revolt in Comparative Perspective by Guy Burton
9. Presidential Leadership and Regime Change in Brazil with Comparisons to the United States and Spanish America by Ted
Goertzel
Authors
Preface
This book was conceived by Ted
Goertzel in the summer of 2012 as part of his life-long interest in Brazil and
“elective affinity” with things Brazilian, going back to his days as a participant
observer in the Brazilian student protests of 1966 to 1968. After publishing
biographies of two of Brazil’s presidents, he found that there was very little
scholarly literature on the role of the presidency in Brazilian politics and society.
Rather than undertake such a comprehensive study on his own, he decided to
consult some members of the Brazilian Studies Association to find colleagues
who shared an interest in putting the Brazilian presidency in an historical perspective
and a comparative context.
The experts who responded came from different
countries – Brazil, England and the United States – and varied widely in their ideological and dispositions
and professional backgrounds. We have made no effort to homogenize the
chapters; each has a clear authorial voice. Paulo Roberto de Almeida, a
diplomat doublé as academic,
responded very enthusiastically to this project, and was able to contribute with
his life-long acquaintance of all-things Brazilian and as well as a deep
knowledge of American Brazilianists, a by-product of his “elective affinities”
with this community of scholars.
The Brazilian Protests of mid-2013 took place as we
were working on this project and stimulated us to think as much about Brazil’s
future as its past. While the protests were largely unexpected in Brazil, they
fitted into theories of presidential leadership and regime change. We wanted to
use our historical and comparative research to offer what insight we could into
the future.
We also wanted to make our work available in
October, 2014, when interest would be high because of the Brazilian
presidential elections. So we took advantage of e-book technology to bring the
reader a volume that is both timelier and less expensive than traditionally
published volumes. We plan to use the same technology to update the volume
after the elections, and we invite readers to contact us with comments and
suggestions, as well as with corrections for any errors they may find.
We expect this work to offer, both for scholars and
for the general public, a comprehensive understanding of the Brazilian
political system in its contemporary developments and challenges.
Ted
Goertzel
Paulo
Roberto de Almeida
September
2014
Introduction
By Ted Goertzel
This book is suitable for students of Latin
American history, politics and economics, as well as for journalists, diplomats,
activists, business people, and anyone interested in Brazil. It is up-to-date,
but also deeply rooted in Brazilian history and in a concern with lasting
social problems. The chapters can be read separately, although readers sketchy
on Brazilian history might do best to begin with the first chapter, by ted
Goertzel, which introduces the fascinating characters who played and are
playing the leading roles in the drama of Brazilian politics.
The second chapter, by Paulo Roberto Almeida,
covers Brazilian economic history from the time of the Empire to the present
day. It is eminently readable with no economic abstractions, but with some
statistical information. It focuses on major changes in the economic regime,
not on day-to-day fluctuations in economic indicators, but on major trends. The
first two chapters, taken together, give a substantial introduction to Brazil’s
political economy.
Chapter three, by João Paulo M. Peixoto, gives a
more detailed description of the politics and administrative practices of each
of the Brazilian presidencies since 1964. Brazil was ruled by military
governments from 1964 to 1985, but new presidents were installed regularly and
there were important differences between their administrations. There are also
many continuities, on both the political and the administrative level, between
the military governments and the civilian governments that followed them. This
chapter covers much of what is distinctively Brazilian about Brazilian
government, as distinct from other Latin American countries.
Chapter four, by Farida Jalalzai and Pedro G. dos
Santos, brings a distinctly feminist perspective to a discussion of the Dilma
Rousseff government, as well as to the accomplishments and promise of Marina
Silva, her leading opponent in the 2014 presidential election. Dilma Rousseff
was Brazil’s first female president, and the fact that her leading opponent for
the presidency is also a woman shows the remarkable progress that Brazil has
made on gender issues.
In Chapter five, Inês Signorini introduces a
linguistic perspective in examining the controversy over the speech patterns of
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Lula was Brazil’s first president without a
university or military academy education, and his speech patterns reflect a
working class background that appealed to many of his supporters but disturbed
some middle class voters. Inês Signorini’s discussion highlights some important
issues in Brazilian political culture.
Chapter six, by Alipio de Sousa Filho, gives a
sympathetic account of the Brazilian protests of 2013, emphasizing the goals of
the Free Pass movement and of the anarchist activists.
Chapter seven, by Sue Branford and Jan Rocha looks
at the political impact of the 2013 protests from the perspective of partisan
politics and social movements, and especially on the 2014 presidential election
campaigns. It concludes with a discussion of the reaction of the Workers Party
and others on the left to the Marina Silva campaign.
The last two chapters place the Brazilian drama in
theoretical perspective, drawing on concepts from political science.
Chapter eight, by Guy Burton, looks at the role of
popular uprisings in Brazilian history, placing the protest movements of 2013
in a historical perspective that includes the monarchist revolts, peasant
mobilization in the Canudos in the Northeast and the Contestado revolt in the
south, the Vaccine Revolt of 1904, the Constitutionalist Rebellion of 1932, the
pro and anti-military intervention demonstrations of 1964, the Diretas Já movement to restore
democracy, and the movement to impeach Fernando Collor. Burton uses theories of
presidential leadership to explain governmental responses to these movements.
The last chapter, by Ted Goertzel, uses a theory of
presidential leadership taken from the work of political scientist Stephen
Skowronek to compare Brazilian patterns of regime change to those in the United
States and in Spanish America. It offers some insight into the alternatives for
Brazil’s future.
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Wait for the pizza...
Paulo Roberto de Almeida
