Democracia e política econômica no Brasil: os limites da politização das questões econômicas entre 1985-2003

Abstract

Study about the recent Brazilian democratic period and the crooked way traversed until the economic stabilization with the Real. It has as objective to examine in what ways the specificities of the democracy and of the presidentialism has been influenced and influenced the macroeconomic management in the period understood between 1985 and 2002. The conducting wire of the work is the constitution of an element, to one time alone, technical and political: the economic team (Treasury department, Ministry of the Planning and Central Banking). The formation and the performance of diverse teams resulted in various economic plans with the purpose to fight the high taxes of inflation. The urgency required for the solution of this problem during the 80s decade, in a conjuncture of double transition, culminated in a delegated democracy where the Executive concentrates a great power of decision, mainly in the substance of economic policy. These attributes were widely used in the electoral periods in favor of the politician group that was in the power, configuring the politician-economic cycles. This occurred with Cruzado and, mainly, with the Real, one of the main reasons for the re-election of Fernando Henrique Cardoso. His government represented the adhesion (initiated by Fernando Collor) to the neoliberal recipe, confirmed by the orthodox macroeconomic management and the adoption of the “good politics and institutions”. The result of this was the deepening of the institutional cultivation throughout the last decade that, added to the presidencies of coalition and the presence of the delegated element, allows affirming that the governments in this period were occupied in the assembly of an ample base of political support and in the good results of the economic policy.