Book Discussion - Decadent Developmentalism: The Political Economy of Democratic Brazil by Matthew Taylor

Join us for this amazing panel organised by the King’s Brazil Institute and the Department of Political Economy to discuss Dr Matthew Taylor’s new book Decadent Developmentalism: The Political Economy of Democratic Brazil (Cambridge University Press, 2020).

Book description:

Brazil features regularly in global comparisons of large developing economies. Yet since the 1980s the country has been caught in a low-level equilibrium, marked by lackluster growth and destructive inequality. One cause is the country's enduring commitment to a set of ideas and institutions labelled developmentalism. This book argues that developmentalism has endured, despite hyperactive reform, because institutional complementarities across economic and political spheres sustain and drive key actors and strategies that are individually advantageous, but collectively suboptimal. Although there has been incremental evolution in some institutions, complementarities across institutions sustain a pattern of 'decadent developmentalism' that swamps systemic change. Breaking new ground, Taylor shows how macroeconomic and microeconomic institutions are tightly interwoven with patterns of executive-legislative relations, bureaucratic autonomy, and oversight. His analysis of institutional complementarities across these five dimensions is relevant not only to Brazil but also to the broader study of comparative political economy.

Panelists

Matthew Taylor is an associate professor at the School of International Service at American University. He is the author or co-editor of four books and a variety of articles on crime, corruption, courts, and the political economy of development in Latin America. Dr Taylor is also the author of Judging Policy: Courts and Policy Reform in Democratic Brazil (Stanford University Press, 2008), which was awarded the Brazilian Political Science Association's Victor Nunes Leal Prize for best book, and co-editor with Timothy J. Power of Corruption and Democracy in Brazil: The Struggle for Accountability (University of Notre Dame Press, 2011).

Andreza A. De Souza Santos is Lecturer, Course Director and Director of the Brazilian Studies Programme at the Latin American Centre at the University of Oxford. She is also a fellow at St. Antony’s College. Her research is concerned with the intersections and the dynamics between formal and informal political and economic systems, and her most recent book is The Politics of Memory: Urban Cultural Heritage in Brazil (Rowman & Littlefield, 2019). She is also co-editor of Urban Transformations and Public Health in the Emergent City (Manchester University Press, 2020) and African Cities and Collaborative Futures Urban Platforms and Metropolitan Logistics (Manchester University Press, 2021).

Anthony Pereira is Professor of Brazilian Studies and International Development at King’s College London. Before joining King’s in 2010, Professor Pereira held positions at the New School for Social Research in New York City, the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University in the Boston area, and Tulane University in New Orleans, all in the United States, and the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom. He has also been a visiting professor at the Federal University of Pernambuco in Recife, the Federal University of Minas Gerais in Belo Horizonte, and the International Relations Institute of the University of São Paulo in the city of São Paulo, Brazil. His recent books include (with Jeff Garmany) Understanding Contemporary Brazil (Routledge, 2018) and Modern Brazil: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2020).

Daniel Henrique Alves (moderator) is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Political Economy, King’s College London.