Redistributive and Developmental Policies of the Brazilian State during the World Economic Upswing

Abstract

This article forms a part of a longer study that deals with the developmental problems of the peripheries in the global hierarchical world economy. This part of the research introduces the economic and social policies of semi-peripheral Brazil under the Lula era, the most successful catching-up period of the largest Latin-American country after the Second World War. The research questions were how the government influenced domestic consumption and investments in the period of the world economic expansion, and how efficient these policies were in increasing the Brazilian economic growth and mitigating the historically deep poverty and inequality. The article concludes that the developmentalist and redistributive government policies could not have had meaningful positive results if beneficial world economic circumstances had not made it possible by facilitating export and production.