Industrial Promotion and Political Instability: "Fifty Years inFive" and the Meanings of National Development in 1950s Brazil. Open Access

Ioris, Rafael Rossotto (2009)

Permanent URL: https://etd.library.emory.edu/concern/etds/gt54kn70r?locale=en
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Abstract

In October 1955, Juscelino Kubitschek was elected President of Brazil after having run a campaign that promised to promote fifty years of economic growth in the five years of his presidential. This goal was to be achieved by means of a state-led program of fast-paced industrialization, which became known as the Targets Plan. The aim of rapidly transforming Brazilian society mobilized government officials, intellectuals, and organized industrial labor into a rich discussion about the meanings of national development. These social segments advanced different views, but, in the end, the agenda-setting process of the national government favored fast absolute economic growth rather than social incorporation of economically marginalized sectors. In contrast to the prevailing literature on development promotion in the post-World War II context, my work indicates that the Brazilian government did not promote its developmental goals in isolation from broader social segments. On the contrary, I show that the areas of the Plan with better results were those which constantly interfaced with private business groups. Still, while the Targets Plan fostered widespread interest in national Brazilian society, the administration favored specific views and interests in detriment of others, particularly those of organized labor groups. Also in direct contrast with canonic arguments about political stability on fast-industrializing societies, my study suggests that what provoked the final destabilization of the political system in operation in Brazil in mid-century was not the fact that popular demands were rising at an exceedingly fast rate. Instead, based on a detailed analysis of a rich source material, which included official documents of the Council of Development (the official agency in charge of implementing the Targets Plan), intellectuals works and union-based labor publications, I advance the view that the destabilization of the regime that followed the implementation of the Plan derived from the fact that broader and more socially inclusive conceptions on national development were flattened into a top-down plan centered exclusively on fostering fast rates of absolute economic growth.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents Introduction p. 1 Chapter One State Planning and National Development: Political Devices for Turbulent Times p. 14 Chapter Two Development in a Global Perspective and Brazil 's International Search for a New Historical Course p. 53 Chapter Three The Institute of Advanced Brazilian Studies and the Technocrats: Development as State-Led Social Inclusion or as Market-Based Growth p. 92 Chapter Four The Targets Plan and the Council of Development: Implementing the Technocratic Approach to Development Promotion p. 135 Schedule of Nationalization of Auto-production p. 178 Chapter Five National Development and Industrial Labor: Metalworkers of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro and the Case of Carestia: p. 187 Minimal Wage Increase, Inflation Rates, and Salary Losses p. 217 Conclusion p. 231 Appendix I p. 237 Bibliography p. 242

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