Historians of Latin America will find these three volumes on Brazil in the 1970s of unequal value and usefulness. Each contains much factual detail on Brazilian policies and politics, a good deal of which has not been readily available in English. The two edited works also provide some intriguing bases for comparing authoritarian domestic and foreign policies in Brazil with those in other Latin American and Third World nations. Bruneau and Faucher’s Authoritarian Capitalism and McDonough’s Power and Ideology in Brazil both focus on the development of Brazil under an authoritarian regime, and they rely heavily on statistical analysis to interpret Brazilian actions and motivations. To a greater extent than Selcher’s Brazil in the International System, they expose the pitfalls awaiting students of the contemporary scene who attempt to build theories of political behavior at once specific and flexible enough to explain the present and to anticipate future developments. Subsequent events in Brazil raise serious questions about some of their perceptions and hypotheses of political changes.
Authoritarian Capitalism, grew out of a series of seminars at McGill University in early 1980. Its purpose is to discuss details of “current” development strategy in Brazil in terms of a “model” of development. Delays in publication have robbed many of the details of their currency, and the Brazilian model continues to defy precise definition. The work consists of eleven chapters and twenty-nine tables and figures. A brief foreword and introduction by the editors focus on the complexity of development everywhere, especially in Brazil. Faucher’s chapter on the breakdown of the authoritarian order is divided between a jargonish section on the economy and a fairly straightforward treatment of politics through about 1978. Thomas G. Sanders deals exclusively with politics, emphasizing the gradual relaxation of restraints since 1974 and the effects of the political amnesty decreed in 1979. Four chapters are concerned with the role of the state in the economy. Thomas J. Trebat discusses public enterprises in Brazil and Mexico, noting that Mexican policy-makers have used them to promote income redistribution while the Brazilians have emphasized capital accumulation. Werner Baer and Adolfo Figueroa collaborate to show how and why state enterprises in Brazil and Peru, for somewhat different reasons, have contributed to substantial increases in the concentration of income. Peter Evans examines the three integrated petrochemical complexes in Brazil in terms of capital accumulation, and Kenneth Paul Erickson reviews the role of technocrats as state entrepreneurs and assesses the high social and political costs of Brazil’s energy policies. Organized labor is the subject of the chapter by Ronaldo Munck, who provides a Marxist view of Brazilian labor since the 1930s, as well as some comparisons with the experiences of the Argentine labor movement. Francisco Colman Sercovich is concerned with the problems of exchange and absorption of technology in Brazilian industry. He acknowledges limitations on Brazil’s present ability to absorb advanced technology, but emphasizes that Brazil is already exporting techniques of civil engineering and the processing of raw materials that are appropriate for other developing countries. Riordan Roett offers a cogent review of the drift of Brazilian foreign policy away from the United States in recent years. Interested readers may wish to compare the views of Sercovich and Roett with those of Selcher and Frank D. McCann in Brazil in the International System.
Peter McDonough’s Power and Ideology in Brazil would have been an exciting book had it appeared seven or eight years ago. Nearly a decade and thousands of hours of computer time have, however, been spent to put it into its present form, to prove beyond question what Brazilianists have known empirically and intuitively for many years. The basic foundation of McDonough’s research is an elaborate questionnaire completed by some 1,500 members of the civilian elites in Brazil in 1972-73, under economic and political circumstances that no longer exist. Leaders of domestic and multinational industries, bankers, heads of state enterprises, top civil servants, politicians of the administration and opposition parties, labor leaders, and half a dozen bishops were questioned, so that their relationships with each other and their position in and attitudes toward the power structure might be determined. For some purposes the author reduces the categories of respondents to three broad groups—economists, social reformers, and politicians—and discovers that all expect the state to play a strong role in the economy and society, that the economists are strongly supportive of the authoritarian regime, that members of the official party are more conservative than their counterparts in the opposition, that government-appointed labor leaders are remarkably conservative in politics, and that all but a few respondents hold to the ideal of a democratic government. The implication throughout is that these elites somehow had, but failed to use, the potential to change political, social, and economic priorities in Brazil. The great weakness of McDonough’s political analysis is that, for sound practical and security reasons, it leaves out both those who really exercised power in the early 1970s and their severest critics. The armed forces, the men in the president’s entourage, intellectuals, and all nonelite groups are omitted from consideration, as is the possibility of political initiative by the government itself. McDonough is fascinated with the methodology he employs and tells the reader far more than one cares or needs to know about the apparently infinite number of statistical permutations that can be drawn from the responses to his questionnaire. As an exercise in political theory building, and as a contribution to a future comparative study of the role of elites in authoritarian regimes, this work has much to recommend it. Power and Ideology in Brazil is disappointing, however, as a contribution to knowledge of how the military regime came to be, or why it has moved toward a more representative political system.
Brazil in the International System examines Brazil’s long-standing quest for world power status, which has been “little less than breathtaking over the past twenty years” (p. xiii). A broad perspective on Brazilian achievements and goals is found in the first half of the book. The remaining chapters look, in turn, at Brazil’s relations with northern Latin America, the Southern Cone, West Germany, and sub-Saharan Africa, concluding with a comparison of Brazil and India by Michael A. Morris. Conspicuous by their absence are separate essays on Brazilian relations with East Asia, Great Britain, France, and the super powers. Ronald Schneider’s perceptive foreword reviews the bibliography on Brazilian foreign policy, comments on postwar United States-Brazilian relations, and assesses the contributions in this work. Historians will appreciate McCann’s masterful synthesis of continuity and change in Brazil’s foreign policy since the founding of the empire. The heart of the collection is Selcher’s “Brazil in the World: A Ranking Analysis of Capability and Status Measures,” which is complemented by analyses of the nation’s military and economic capabilities and potential, respectively by Max G. Manwaring and Martin T. Katzman. They pay particular attention to Brazil’s present and probable future relations with its South American neighbors, and agree with Robert D. Bond, writing chiefly on Venezuela, and Carlos J. Moneta and Rolf Wichman, on the Southern Cone, that Brazil is likely to continue to seek greater influence, but not hegemony, throughout the continent. Wolf Grabendorff suggests that the recent close diplomatic and economic ties between West Germany and Brazil may not persist as their national interests diverge. A resentful tone, not present in the other contributions, permeates “African-Brazilian Relations: A Reconsideration,” by Anani Dzidzienyo and J. Michael Turner, who do not fully approve of Brazil’s self-serving efforts at rapprochement with the countries of Black Africa. Brazil in the International System confirms that Brazil has outstripped the rest of Latin America and now occupies a position midway between the Third World and the so-called major powers. While the book shows some of the unevenness inherent in multiauthor works, it is on balance a coherent and cautiously restrained study that may be read with profit by students of Brazil and of realpolitik at all levels.
