Book Review: The Brazilian Corporative State and Working-Class Politics
| Author | Martin G. Needler |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/106591297903200231 |
| Published date | 01 June 1979 |
| Date | 01 June 1979 |
| Subject Matter | Book Review |
Book
Reviews
and
h’otes
243
Perhaps the most important issue raised by this book is whether political scien-
tists can discount the impact of culture upon political systems. Valenzuela seems
to imply that we can, and that we should devote more attention to the study
of
the idiosyncratic impact
of
key historical events on political structures. However,
to disregard the very substantial body of recent literature that deals with the cul-
tural roots
of
political phenomena is to risk laying one’s analytical foundations on
the quicksand of
mi generis
explanations. Such explanations, for example, may not
draw attention to the similarities which seem to exist between the phenomena
Valenzuela describes in Chile and those observed by Wayne Cornelius at the local
level in urban Mexico. IVe need more research that can combine the exceptional
attention to detail of case studies such
as
Valenzuela’s with broader bodies of com-
parative political theory.
Arturo Valenzuela’s book is extremely provocative with regard to discussion of
such theoretical issues. It is
a
book that
will
set the standard for the study
of
local
politics in Latin America for quite some time.
STEVE
c.
ROPP
Nezo
Mexico
State University
The Brazilian Corporative State and Working-Class Politics.
By
KENNETII
PAUL
ERICKSON. (Berkeley: University
of
California Press,
1978.
Pp.
242.
$14.00.)
For many political scientists, the elaboration
of
concepts tends to become an
end in itself. They are defined and redefined, the advantages of one definition are
touted over those
of
another, and the connotations of the words used in the defini-
tion are endlessly eqdorcd. “Corporatism” and “authoritarianism” have received
a
great deal
of
such treatment, and most books or articles with one or the other
term in the title
are
generally
useful
bedtime reading for the insomniac.
So
it gives
me
a
great deal of pleasure to be able to report that Kenneth Erickson has pro-
duced
a
book which not only is
a
valuable substantive discussion of the evolution
of working-class politics
in
Brazil, but is
at
the same time an unusual demonstration
of hoiv the concepts, models, and paradi
fascinating toys can become effective tools.
The substantive story, which covers labor legislation, the organization and
policies
of
the Ministry
of
Labor, and the structure of trade union organization in
Brazil from the early
1930s
to the present day, is
well
researched,
a
variety of pub-
lished secondary works and official documents being supplemented as sources by
interviews and reading of the Brazilian press. Along with some standard descriptive
history, Erickson carefully analyzes
a
series
of
political strikes, and presents
a
variety
of relevant material in tabular form, ranging from information on the career pat-
terns of Ministers
of
Labor, through data on inflation, wages, and government ex-
penditures, to the sectoral identification (government, employers, or workers) of
officers in social security entities.
IVhat is especially striking in the book is the catholic use of
a
wide range of
socia1 theorists to understand the character
of
labor politics
as
it has evolved in
Brazil. Erickson shows hoiv the populist style
of
political leaders
of
the democratic
period interacted with the paternalism
of
bureaucrats and the authoritarian tradi-
tion left by GetGlio Vargas within the parameters
of
a
corporative political culture.
On corporatism and authoritarianism, Erickson relies,
as
most writers now would,
on Howard IViarda and Juan Linz, but he
also
ranges far afield to derive insights
from the work of Max Weber, Robert Dahl, Charles
W.
Anderson, Bamngton
Moore, and Nathaniel
Leff,
among others.
He
is convincing in demonstrating that
the legal, political, and cultural context of Brazilian labor politics is corporative,
that is, that labor legislation and administration are designed to make organized
labor
subject to the control
of
government, to impose an artificial consensus at the
cqense
of
the conscious pursuit of class interests.
The principal defect in the book, and one which is inherent in most if not
all
of
the writing using the corporatist paradigm, is the lack of clarity
as
to whether
corporatism is simpIy
a
peculiarity of Luso-Hispanic societies,
or
perhaps
of
all
nonhnglo-Saxon societies, or whether it reflects tendencies in the economic and
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