Brookings Institution Press
Starting Over: Brazil Since 1985
Key Metrics
- Albert Fishlow
- Brookings Institution Press
- Hardcover
- 9780815721437
- 9.1 X 5.9 X 1 inches
- 1.15 pounds
- Political Science > Comparative Politics
- English
Secure TransactionBook Description
Brazil has undergone transformative change since the 1980s, from an authoritarian regime to a democratic society advancing on all fronts--political, social, economic, and diplomatic. In Starting Over, Albert Fishlow traces the evolution of this member of the BRICS group over the last twenty-five years and looks toward the future as the newly elected president, Dilma Rousseff, follows her very popular predecessor, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, or Lula.
The transformation of the country began with the founding of the Nova República and the Constitution of 1988, which established a strong executive and encased key social principles such as a citizen's right to education and health care. Then the Real Plan of 1994--initiated under President Fernando Henrique Cardoso--set the stage for economic growth and a stable economy. There were setbacks, especially in the mid-1990s with the Mexican devaluation, Asian financial crisis, Russian default, and Argentine collapse, and, later, the U.S. recession. But changed economic policies in the late 1990s put Brazil on the right path to future economic growth, which resumed during the Lula years.
With popular participation in the electoral process at an all-time high, politics has been profoundly altered in Brazil. Economic rules are now more permanent, and economic advance more regular. A healthier and longer life is now available to a broader swath of the population, and there is opportunity for social advancement. In addition, its foreign policy has greater consequence internally as well as externally.
Dilma's two immediate predecessors--Cardoso and Lula--are tough acts to follow. Their influence has been profound, and Brazil is now a very different nation than it was in the 1980s. But she is working from their template to move the country forward. This insightful book clearly explains how and why the country has progressed to its current standing and what the future portends. Starting Over is essential reading for anyone trying to grasp what is happening in this dynamic nation.
Author Bio
Albert Fishlow has been improving our understanding of the economic history and development of Brazil and Latin America for six decades—and counting. He is professor emeritus at two institutions: the University of California, Berkeley, where he served as dean of international and area studies and spent 22 years as a member of the faculty, and Columbia University, where he was director of the Institute of Latin American Studies and the Center for the Study of Brazil until his retirement in 2007.
His career has included appointments at Yale University, where he directed the Center for International and Area Studies, and civil service as deputy assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs during the Carter Administration. In the 1990s, Fishlow was a founder and first president of the Latin American and Caribbean Economic Association, regarded as the most successful society for economic research in the developing world.
In 1999, the Republic of Brazil awarded him the National Order of the Southern Cross, the country’s highest honor. Throughout the Americas, Fishlow is renowned for his exemplary scholarship, leadership, and mentorship of generations of Brazilian and American students.
Fishlow completed his bachelor’s degree at the University of Pennsylvania and his PhD in economics at Harvard in 1963. His dissertation, on the impact of American railroads on the antebellum economy, was a pathbreaking effort to apply quantitative techniques to historical research that would come to define the intellectual orientation of his scholarship.
His publications span the full breadth of his career; they include the first rigorous assessment of Brazilian income distribution following the rapid economic growth of the late 1960s, published in the American Economic Review in 1972, and his 2011 book Starting Over: Brazil Since 1985, the definitive economic history of Brazil since the restoration of democracy through the early 21st century. His latest book, Agriculture and Industry in Brazil, is scheduled for publication this year.
Source: Harvard University
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