Neoliberalism, State and Welfare: What Does the Pandemic Interrupt or Reinforce in Brazil?
| Autor | Roberto Goulart Menezes/Rafael Alexandre Mello |
| Páginas | 151-173 |
Neoliberalism, State and Welfare
151
Introduction1
T
he nancial crisis brought state legitimacy to the center of
the debate in the world political economy. Just over a year ago, the
spread of - shook global capitalism and gave rise to an unprece-
dented crisis, calling into question the hegemony of the neoliberal logic.
Since the beginning of , the global health crisis, with China as its rst
epicenter, has practically paralyzed the world economy and brought down
all national and international economic indicators.
1 We thank fapdf for supporting this research. Process 798/2019.
How to cite this chapter? / ¿Cómo citar este capítulo?
Menezes, R. G. & Mello, R. A. (). Neoliberalism, State and Welfare: What
Does the Pandemic Interrupt or Reinforce in Brazil? In E. Vieira Posada & F. Peña
(Eds.), Impactos de la - en el sistema internacional y en la integración regional
(vol. , pp. -). Ediciones Universidad Cooperativa de Colombia. https://doi.
org/./
Capítulo 5
Neoliberalism, State and Welfare:
What Does the Pandemic Interrupt
or Reinforce in Brazil?
Roberto Goulart Menezes
Rafael Alexandre Mello
Impactos de la cov Id-19 e n el s Ist ema Int erna cIo nal y en la Int egr acIó n re gIo nal
152
In Latin America, the most unequal region in the world, the health
crisis has further aggravated the situation of inequity. Since , due to
the crisis in the commodities cycle, the reduction of poverty and income
inequality in the region has been losing momentum. According to the
Social Panorama of Latin America of the Economic Commission for
Latin America and the Caribbean (), there are million people
living below the poverty line, million of whom are in extreme situa-
tions, compared to million people in these conditions in (,
). With the pandemic, the economies of Latin America and the Ca-
ribbean, which have already been experiencing low economic growth in
recent years, have seen increased uncertainty, and have tested their state’s
capacity to provide public health services and policies to alleviate the
plight of vast parts of the countries’ populations; the Brazilian case is
emblematic.
In Brazil, the largest economy in the region that, between and ,
managed to reduce inequalities through the “combination over time of the
eect of dierent policies aimed at dierent audiences, whose common
characteristic has been the prospect of reversing the long trajectory of sta-
bility of high inequality” (Arretche, , p. )2, a process which has lost
momentum. Additionally, since then, austerity policies have been gaining
strength in the country.
Former President Michel Temer (-), with the broad support of
the Brazilian Congress, passed Constitutional Amendment no. /,
freezing public spending for years. e main objective of this measure is
not to clean up public accounts, but to suppress the social rights enshrined
in the Constitution. It is precisely this obstacle to the state’s budget that
prevents the adoption of new public policies to meet the needs of the popu-
lation. Additionally, the passing of the counter-reform in labor legislation,
2 Due to a slight, but signicant, difference in content between the original work in
Portuguese, cited here and translated freely by us, and the posterior translated work
(Paths of Inequality in Brazil), we opted for the former. It must be noted that we do
not presume to know why this difference occurs, only that it does and that the original
meaning suits our purposes best.
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