| In the 1980s and 1990s, most countries in Latin America pursued neoliberal economic reforms, but Brazil did not. Instead, Brazil experimented with heterodox reforms and other innovative policies. This study explores the reasons for Brazil's unusual stabilization policies in the period following the 1982 debt crisis. It evaluates standard theoretical approaches to economic policy choice in the political economy literature and develops a cultural explanation for Brazilian policy exceptionalism.; Chapters 1 through 3 are primarily theoretical. Chapter 1 introduces the puzzle of Brazilian exceptionalism and establishes empirically that Brazilian economic policy after 1982 was significantly less neoliberal than that of other Latin American countries. To explain this policy difference, Chapter 2 reviews four theoretical approaches to economic policy choice---power, institutions, interests, and ideas---and finds them adequate for understanding the timing and implementation dimensions of Brazilian stabilization policy, but insufficient for explaining Brazil's experimental policy content. Chapter 3 proposes a cultural approach to economic policy analysis to address this deficiency.; Chapters 4 through 6 are largely empirical. They apply Chapter 3's cultural approach to two cases of Brazilian exceptionalism: the Cruzado (1986) and Real (1994) Plans. Chapter 4 describes the Brazilian economic policy establishment and identifies key decision makers. Chapter 5 uses primary and secondary source material to establish the values (growth, industrialization, development of the internal market, tolerance for inflation) and skills (state regulation, planning, indexation) of the policy culture that influenced decision makers in both cases. Chapter 6 analyzes the impact of this culture on the Cruzado and Real Plans' design and implementation.; The study concludes that the Brazilian economic policy culture's unwillingness to accept recession, as well as its historic compromise with inflation and long tradition of state-directed solutions to economic problems, are critical to understanding the content of Brazilian stabilization policy after 1982. The Cruzado Plan avoided neoliberal solutions to the debt crisis almost entirely. The Real Plan accepted a few orthodox stabilization measures, but adapted them to traditional Brazilian economic policy goals and methods. If the Cruzado Plan was Brazilian Exceptionalism par excellence, the Real Plan was neoliberalism "Brazilian style." Chapter 7 reflects on the implications of the Brazilian case for theories of policy choice more generally and proposes ways of using a cultural approach to analyze other regions and policy issues. |
