Crafting Coalitions for Reform: Business Perferences, Political Institutions, and Neoliberal Reform in Brazil

by Kingstone, Peter R.

• ISBN13: 9780271019390
• ISBN10: 0271019395
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1999-08-01
• Publisher: Pennsylvania State Univ Pr

Summary

The success of political efforts to create a more open economy in Brazil over the past decade has depended crucially on support from the industrial sector, which long enjoyed the benefits of protection by the state from economic competition. Why businesses previously so sheltered would back neoliberal reform, and why opposition arose at times from sectors least threatened by free trade, are the puzzles this book seeks to answer.

Drawing on more than one hundred interviews with industrialists and business association representatives, as well as a wide range of other sources, Peter Kingstone argues that the key to understanding the behavior of industrialists lies in the impact of four factors on their preferences for reform: the effect of economic crisis on industrialists' perception of the viability of the earlier development model; the sectoral location of their firms in the economy and the advantages historically accruing therefrom; the adjustment options available to them given their position in the market; and the credibility of the government's promises a

Author Biography

Peter R. Kingstone is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Connecticut.

Table of Contents

List of Abbreviations	vii
List of Tables and Figures	xi
Acknowledgments	xiii
Introduction	xvii
Explaining Support for Free Trade: Industrial Adjustment and Political Signals	1	(26)
Breaking with the Past: Fiscal Crises, Constitutional Messes, and the Business Revolt Against the State	27	(39)
Industrial Adjustment and the Costs and Benefits of Neoliberal Reform: The Micro-Level Bases of Business Preferences	66	(45)
Business Modernizers and the Challenge of Economic Reform: The Organizational Bases of Opposition and Support	111	(38)
Crafting the Coalition: The Rise and Fall of Fernando Collor's Neoliberal Reform	149	(40)
Recrafting the Coalition: Fernando Henrique Cardoso and the Consolidation of Neoliberal Reform	189	(39)
Lessons from Brazil: Sustainable Reforms and the Development Consequences of Private Business Power	228	(31)
Bibliography	259	(20)
Index	279