Reforming Brazil

This work explores the complex web of policies, ideas, institutions, social forces, and political actors behind Brazilian reforms. The focus is on the complex reform efforts during the post-1985 democratization era. The opening chapters place Brazilian reform in comparative perspective.

This groundbreaking work is the first volume in English to examine Brazil''s historic policy reforms of the 1990s and the political, economic, and social results. For years the large and ineffective government of Brazil could neither improve the country''s greatly uneven distribution of wealth nor maintain inflation at reasonable levels. In the 1990s, long overdue changes bettered the government''s fiscal performance, tamed inflation, and addressed chronic social ills stemming from the imbalance of wealth. But many problems, and many questions, remain. Why is Brazil still so poor, and why is inequality so intransigent? Were some of the reforms counterproductive, or could they have been implemented in a more effective way? Collecting essays by top Brazilianist scholars from various disciplines and intellectual traditions, Reforming Brazil provides new insights for international policy makers, economists, and scholars of Brazil.