Introduction: The Nature of the PT Governments: A Variety of Neoliberalism?

• DOI: 10.1177/0094582X19891140
• Author: Ana Paula Colombi,Alfredo Saad-Filho,Juan Grigera
• Date: 01 January 2020
• Published date: 01 January 2020
• Subject Matter: Introduction

https://doi.org/10.1177/0094582X19891140

LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 230, Vol. 47 No. 1, January 2020, 4–8

DOI: 10.1177/0094582X19891140

© 2019 Latin American Perspectives

4

Introduction

The Nature of the PT Governments

A Variety of Neoliberalism?

by

Alfredo Saad-Filho, Juan Grigera, and Ana Paula Colombi

Brazil’s image has changed dramatically in recent years. The country was

widely praised as one of the most successful social democracies of neoliberal

times under Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (2003–2010) and in the first half of

Dilma Rousseff’s (2011–2016) administration. Yet, Brazil was engulfed by a

perfect storm in 2013, including street riots, severe economic crisis followed

by prolonged stagnation, rapid deindustrialization, spiraling unemploy-

ment, fiscal calamity, growing inequalities, rampant corruption, and unprec-

edented political strife. Years of stability under Lula and Rousseff collapsed

into a tortured judicial-parliamentary-media-led coup in 2016, leading to the

malodorous administration of Rousseff’s vice president, Michel Temer. His

unfortunate tenure was followed in 2018 by something far, far worse: the elec-

tion of Jair Bolsonaro.

Bolsonaro’s election must be the gods’ idea of a joke. The former army cap-

tain set up an administration populated by misfits, morons, bandits, army offi-

cers, and his own children (overlaps allowed). Every day would bring another

scandal; the only difference was the driver—this time, would it be deranged

ideology, naked greed, malign intent, or mere idiocy? The President and the top

members of his administration were so spectacularly asinine that, compara-

tively, Donald Trump and his followers offered an example of refinement and

self-restraint. Unsurprisingly, in a matter of months the ramshackle right-wing

alliance that had elected Bolsonaro began to unravel.

In order to understand Brazil’s predicament we must first come to terms

with the 13 years in which the Partido dos Trabalhadores (Workers’ Party—PT)

occupied the federal executive. Was the PT successful because it abandoned its

earlier socialist ideology and confrontational approach to politics to embrace a

tropical “Third Way”? Because its exemplary social programs and transfer pol-

icies lifted tens of millions from abject poverty into a new citizenship? Because

of the party’s support for big business and promotion of Brazil’s influence

across the Global South? Or merely because its tenure luckily coincided with

the global commodities boom?

Alfredo Saad-Filho is a professor of political economy and international development at King’s

College London. Juan Grigera is a professor of the political economy of inclusive development at

King’s College London. Ana Paula Colombi is a professor at the Federal University of Espírito

Santo. The collective thanks them for organizing this issue.

891140LAPXXX10.1177/0094582X19891140Latin American PerspectivesSaad-Filho et al. / Introduction

research-article2019