The Brazilian state after corporatism: conflicting narratives and the problem of subnational reality
Schneider (2004) identifies business organization as a classical collective action equation solved by selective incentives provided by the state, indicating a commitment to a state-centered analysis. “My argument is […] when it organizes, the private sector is essentially a reactor to government actions” (p. 11). State actors were thus responsible not only for corporatist associations formed by decree, but also for voluntary and inclusive associations formed through selected benefits such as representation in policy forums or jurisdiction over public activities or funding. Despite his commitment to restoring the state, Schneider’s analysis avoids structural narratives and even corporatist analyses, which he believes would hinder any explanation of variances in corporate connections. Although organizations are not regarded as unchanging under corporatism, as they are in civil society analysis, the author believes that change will be sluggish and restrained. Even if most corporatist assessments reinstalled the state, this would result in “a structure and monolith”. Schneider provides a compelling case for an actor-centered research approach that examines the micro-motives of state actors in order to capture differences in business organization.
At this point, it is vital to note what appears to be a significant flaw in Schneider’s study of corporate organization, which impedes future progress in comprehending the extent to which economic players organize at the subnational level.
It is worth noting three factors in this regard:
⦁Schneider critiques the narrowness of a direct collective action approach to company organization for failing to consider the context and the
However, he does not propose a basic definition of state formations in Latin America.It is not true that structural state approaches do not account for variation: not only does the traditional literature on policy arenas (Lowi, 1972) and polity networks (Rhodes, 1997) imply different patterns of state interaction with society, but these narratives also depict the state as a non-coherent system resulting from an adaptive process of institutional change in which traditional structures fit into and coexist with modern ones (Nunes, 1997).
⦁Mapping different institutional or political structures that coexist, sometimes in conflict, may be a basic and required step when one advances from a national perspective to local realities. This criterion was anticipated and addressed by Locke (1995) in his study of the causes of different regional patterns of economic development in Italy. In contrast to the current view of a coherent and homogeneous institutional nation state, he makes his case and follows an alternative viewpoint in which “national political economies are not coherent systems but rather incoherent composites of diverse subnational patterns that coexist (often uneasily) within the same territory” (p. 3).
Given these caveats, and following a state-centered path to understanding the many forms of business organization in Brazil at a subnational level, an account of the Brazilian state and institutional matrix that can cope with the country’s institutional variety is utilized. Brazil’s state development and modernization did not result in the progressive suppression of old institutions or a homogeneous and modern institutional landscape. On the contrary, this evolved and unfurled through the juxtaposition of several institutional frameworks, with older routines interwoven in more modern activities.
In keeping with this viewpoint, Nunes’ (1997) account of Brazilian state development stands out, arguing that four institutional grammars underlay the pattern of articulation between state and society in Brazil: clientelism, corporatism, procedural universalism, and bureaucratic isolation. Formal institutions in Brazil use a blend of one or more of these grammars, which vary depending on the historical time. For the sake of this article, it is important to note that, whereas clientelism is an institutional pattern that shapes old societies and relationships, procedural universalism underpins modern, market-oriented societies and interactions. The former is based on a pattern of personal and asymmetric relations in which all goods or actions exchanged are embedded in a larger context of long-term interpersonal bonds and duties, as well as future payment expectations. However, the latter refers to impersonal patterns of relationships in which products and actions are transferred in accordance with rules that take no account of the characteristics of the persons involved. In this sense, procedural universalism serves as an institutional foundation for modern capitalism and a necessary, but not sufficient, prerequisite for liberal-democratic orders.
Regarding the two other institutional frameworks—corporatism and bureaucracy
Insularity – These fall in between the extreme institutional formulae that distinguish traditional and modern societies: clientelism and procedural universalism, respectively. Even while bureaucratic insularity refers to a process in which the state’s technical sectors are shielded from the influences of political parties and pressure groups, they are not immune to clientelist infiltration. Corporatism, on the other hand, differs from procedural universalism in that it attempts accommodation by reducing the number of conflicting organizations. In this sense, as Nunes points out, clientelism and corporatism are similar in that they both prevent social conflicts from escalating.
Along with Nunes, it is hypothesized that the Brazilian state is defined by a variety of institutional grammars, and a further step is taken by establishing the notion that the landscape changes while moving down to local government. At the local level, because city borders exist (Peterson, 1981), the state’s complexity is reduced, and institutional patterns that are less hybrid than those observed at the national level are predicted.
However, a second hypothesis is proposed: at the subnational level, a pattern of institutional heterogeneity with regional breadth is expected. In other words, cities and city regions should differ in terms of institutional frameworks and patterns of state-society articulation. This research does not aim to answer the question of how the four institutional grammars identified at the national level are implemented in Brazilian cities and regions. It is unclear if there is a dominant institutional framework and if the four grammars are distributed evenly or unevenly across the territory.
For the purposes of this exploratory study, the following sections examine how two of these institutional grammars – corporatism and clientelism – played out in two Brazilian local realities: Volta Redonda, the Brazilian steel capital, and the Rio de Janeiro metropolitan region. It is established that corporatism and clientelism hampered not just corporate organization, but also the pursuit of developmental politics in these regions. Analyzing these situations, a link is drawn between Brazilian local realities and the cities of Pittsburgh and Chicago, where a variety of corporatism and clientelism (political machine) have not stifled the quest of growth and progress.