Banca de DEFESA: Aristoteles de Almeida Silva

Uma banca de DEFESA de DOUTORADO foi cadastrada pelo programa.
STUDENT : Aristoteles de Almeida Silva
DATE: 11/12/2025
TIME: 09:00
LOCAL: https://meet.google.com/gbo-urqw-wce
TITLE:

Between Two Crises: Resilience and Renewal of Neoliberalism in Brazil Between the Crises of 2008 and 2015/16.

KEY WORDS:

Fiscal austerity; Crisis; Dilma Rousseff administration; Structural power; Instrumental power

PAGES: 306
BIG AREA: Ciências Humanas
AREA: Sociologia
SUMMARY:

The 2008 international financial and economic crisis did not produce a rupture with neoliberalism; on the contrary, it ultimately deepened it, mainly in the form of austerity policies. The European Union is often cited as an exemplary case of this movement. In Brazil, however, the trajectory was different: the initial response to the 2008 crisis moved closer to developmentalism, but the contradictions of the so-called “developmentalist experiment”, the sharpening of class struggle around the public budget and, finally, the 2015–2016 political–economic crisis opened the way for the return of neoliberal reforms. In this context, the process involved disputes over the control of economic policy, the reordering of coalitions and, ultimately, the curtailment of democratic mechanisms. This thesis investigates why and how, between the 2008 crisis and the 2015–2016 crisis, neoliberalism proved resilient and was able to be renewed in Brazil. To this end, the research combines: (i) long-term historical-institutional analysis; (ii) process tracing of state responses to the two crises; (iii) identification of agenda change and of the social actors involved in this change through journalistic texts; (iv) analysis of how Fiesp and Febraban positioned themselves in relation to the “developmentalist experiment” and, later, during the 2015–2016 crisis, and how, over the period, they made use of structural and instrumental forms of power to influence the conduct of economic policy, through content analysis of newspaper articles; (v) examination of the program “Uma ponte para o futuro” as a moment of condensation of the reform agenda; (vi) analysis of the legislative process of the constitutional amendment bill on the “expenditure ceiling” (PEC do Teto de Gastos), based on official documents and interviews with federal deputies and advisers, as well as of the ways in which Fiesp and Febraban expressed support for its approval; and (vii) investigation of how, from the Temer government onward, the banking-financial fraction strengthened its capacity to command economic policy through power resources, among them the “revolving door”. The results show that the “developmentalist experiment” operated under strong institutional constraints and did not alter the financialization of the economy, a direct consequence of the neoliberal reforms of the 1990s. As the countercyclical response lost effectiveness and industrial slowdown deepened, Fiesp and Febraban converged on an agenda of fiscal austerity during the 2015–2016 crisis. The 2016 impeachment functioned as an institutional unlocking mechanism that allowed this agenda to be constitutionalized under the leadership of the PMDB. By articulating the concepts of the structural and instrumental power of the capitalist class with the notion of “neoliberal resilience”, the thesis shows that the concrete form taken by the reforms resulted from the interaction among the fractions of the capitalist class that supported the ousting of Dilma Rousseff, which makes it possible to understand how an anti-popular economic policy could be produced within a democratic regime and why alternatives to neoliberalism were so rapidly emptied out.

COMMITTEE MEMBERS:
Externo à Instituição - MARCUS IANONI - UFF
Interno - 2328733 - EMERSON FERREIRA ROCHA
Externa ao Programa - 404652 - MARIA DE LOURDES ROLLEMBERG MOLLO - nullPresidente - 3154798 - RICARDO COLTURATO FESTI
Externa à Instituição - SARA DA SILVA FREITAS - UFRB