The desarrollista state in Brazil and Mexico

Abstract

This paper abstracts out of a comparison of Brazil and Mexico from the 1930s to the 1980s four essential characteristics of the state and its relations with the economy and the polity: 1) political capitalism, where profits and investment depended on decisions made in the state; 2) a dominant developmental discourse on the necessity of industrialization and of state intervention to promote it; 3) political exclusion of the majority of the adult population; and 4) a fluid, weakly institutionalized bureaucracy in which appointments structured power and representation. These components of the model of the desarrollista state illuminate the motivation behind the actions of state elites (developmentalism); the structure of power within the state (the appointive bureaucracy); and the predominant forms of state interaction with the economy (political capitalism) and with political and civil society (political exclusion). A major goal of this paper is to examine these four characteristics in general, including an assessment of measurable indicators or thresholds, and in Brazil and Mexico.