Brazil: From Successes to the Systemic Crisis

Abstract

The paper focuses on the socioecnomic development of Brazil from the mid-1990s up today. The author puts a special attention to the process of deindustrialisation, which has been expressed in the diminishing share of manufacturing industry in GDP, employment and the structure of goods’ export whereas the role of the primary sector increases in economy and the external trade. The paper scrutinises the achievements of Brazil in reduction of poverty and social inequality, in development of education and enlargement of the social mobility’s channels. At the same time, the author argues that the model of development, apparently successful in 2003–2012, has exhausted itself in the changed conditions. It presupposed the balance of different interests, but this balance has been destroyed. Meanwhile, the social forces that could realise a transition to the new model of development have been weaker than the forces interested in exportation of commodities. The author treats political events in the country in 2015–2017, including the impeachment to Dilma Rousseff, as the counteroffensive of conservative forces in the context of Lava Jato (“car-wash”) corruption scandal which has shaken the fundaments of Brazil’s political system. The main conclusion the author makes from his analysis is that any exit from the deep crisis the country undergoes now will be long and painful.