Introduction

INR6938 Lecture 1 University of North Florida Master of Public Administration program Course syllabus 2019 INR6938 Field experience in International Affairs: Brazil Introduction * The logic of the course * "Thinking without comparisons is unthinkable. And, in the absence of comparisons, so is all scientific thought and all scientific research." (Swanson 1971, p. 145) Parochialism "afflicts too much of the study or science of public administration. Much of what purports to be universalistic is actually highly culture bound and idiosyncratic. Probably Americans are the worst offenders. Too many, ignorant of the world outside of the United States, merely generalize about American public administration, not recognizing that American ideas and practices are idiosyncratic and the exception rather than the rule." (Caiden 1994. p. 46) I cribbed the two quotes above from the opening of my Comparative Public Administration class (PAD6836) because INR6938 seeks to do much the same thing: broaden the perspectives of UNF graduate students by giving them exposure to another society. The book: Montero’s Brazil: Reversal of Fortune, published in 2014. It is hard to find a good, general introduction to Brazil. After all, it is only the fifth most populous country in the world. I read a previous book (more narrowly on Brazilian politics) of his that I thought was well done, and so assigned this. The major (and I’d call it a minor) limitation of the book is that it was published prior to the upward (Brazi↑ on the cover) trend of the previous twenty years turning in to a Brazi↓. Still, this pre-slump perspective may give us context for what has happened since. The U.S. and Brazil I began studying Brazil largely because I was learning Portuguese (to do research in southern Africa) and, in reading about Brazil, became attracted to it. As well, as an American who had lived and studied in Australia, and done research on Canada, it seemed like a good addition to my teaching. Australia, Brazil and Canada are useful comparators for the United States, as all Page 1 of 12 INR6938 Lecture 1 continent-sized settler societies. Australia and Canada may be the two countries in the world most like the US; while Brazil differs in significant ways. Comparison = science. The logic of comparison is, as suggested in the opening quotes, central to science and/or policy analysis. We do comparison a lot in Jacksonville, comparing ourselves to other communities. In the social sciences in the United States, though ‘comparative’ political science, or comparative sociology, or comparative public administration is often shorthand for the study of countries other than the United States. This class will look at Brazil not just to understand it better, but also for the purpose of gaining a better understanding of human governance in the United States. Settler societies. As an example, in a 1964 book that gets far less attention than it should, Louis Hartz (1964) argued that European 'settler societies' constitute a distinct subset of human society, and we could learn a great deal about these places by remembering this history. Hartz's thesis was broadly twofold.1 First, a number of countries in the world today are essentially European societies that were transplanted to other places. So Chile, predominately European in culture in terms of the origins of its people, is a European settler society (the pre-contact people were largely wiped out). Neighbouring Peru, even though it has long been dominated by an elite of Spanish origin, remains a strongly indigenous society (making up a majority of the population) and so wouldn't necessarily be classed as a European settler society in Hartz's terms. Hartz's settler societies, then, are most strongly Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Australia, New Zealand, the US, Canada and Quebec. Like most scholars, Hartz was inconsistent, squeezing into his pool of cases white South Africa. I say inconsistent because if largely Indian Peru is excluded, then certainly largely African South Africa should have been, too. Brazil is also an awkward case for Hartz, because of the large African population.2 These definitional quibbles aside, the second part of Hartz's thesis is that these societies are 'fragments' of Europe, and brought with them the European culture dominant in the home country at the time of settlement. So Quebec, Brazil and the three 'southern cone' countries of South America were settled by largely feudal, 16/17th century France, Portugal and Spain, respectively. Elements of this feudalism can be found to this day. This is certainly so for Brazil, where scholars continue to refer to this feudal legacy in the clientelism and authoritarianism that characterizes government, especially at the state and local level (if you read Portuguese, see Freyre 1978,19; Leal 1948; Torres 1978, 44-5; Prado 1928; and Sodre 1944, 73-104). This notion is also common in histories of Quebec, where the 'Quiet Revolution' began to fight the power of the church and landholders from about the 1950s. The English settlers of North America, on the contrary, brought with them a different culture. Unlike feudal France and Spain, England was in in the early stages of the 'Age of Revolution' (to quote another classic work, see Hobsbawm 1962), in which scientific progress, political freedoms, and individualism were all growing. The United States got an extra dollop of individualism because about half of the original colonies were settled by private individuals, not 1 A third component was that he argued these historical inheritances were very rigid, and so changed little through the centuries. I’m skeptical, and anyhow it isn’t central to how he is used for our purposes. 2 Although a proposed Texas history textbook characterized African immigrants to Texas as laborers seeking plantation work (source), early African immigration to the Americas didn’t work quite like that. Page 2 of 12 INR6938 Lecture 1 by the British state; while 'The Frontier' to the west reinforced this American individualism. Annoyed by your neighbors? Go west, young man! Finally, by the time Australia and New Zealand were settled by the British (largely in the 19th century), England had undergone considerable political development. While the English of the period when North America was settled saw the still feudal English government as something to avoid, by the time Australia and New Zealand were settled, government was increasingly being seen as a solution to social problems, rather than a source of them. Table 1 (following page) sums up these differences. Table 1 -- Settler societies -- broad political culture Brazil Canada Australia USA Indigenous Disorganized, poor Organized, strong Disorganized, poor Organized, strong people material culture material culture material culture material culture 'Discovered' c. 1500 c. 1500 1750s c. 1500 Settled 1520 1605 1788 1620 King of France, State (?) and Settled by King of Portugal British state, and British state individuals American 'loyalists' Independence 1822 1867 1901 1776 'Democratic' 1985? 1848 c. 1820 early 1600s Colonial Democratic, Democratic, Feudal, statist Democratic, statist legacy statist/individualist individualist Source: Instructor winged it. So to sum up: Hartz argues that these societies were defined, to a large extent, by the nature of their historical settlement and, in the case of the (North and South) American countries, three and four centuries later this historical legacy still explains a great deal about these societies. So Canada and Australia are very much like the US, while Brazil, for me, provides a useful cautionary tale: for all the hysterical, fear-mongering paranoia in contemporary American politics, Brazil reminds us how fortunate the US is. But not Santa Catarina! The Brazilian characterization above does not apply to our primary site: Santa Catarina. North American settlement differed greatly between the southern, slave states of Georgia through at least Virginia, and the small farmer settlements of New England. The same applied in Brazil, with slave-based plantation agriculture dominant in the northeast, and the three southern states, especially, characterized by small farms. These states were also settled much later, from industrializing Germany, Italy, and other European countries (including Portugal). Government reform -- In looking at these three countries, I've especially focused on the issue of government reform. The idea here has been to respond to widespread perceptions in the 1970s that both the size of government, and its regulatory reach, had gotten too extensive. Table 2 (on the next page) provides some data on this. By way of a potted introduction to Brazilian government: Feudalism. As indicated above, on initial settlement Brazil was feudal. Belmiro Castor especially discusses this in the chapter of his I’ve asked you to read. Page 3 of 12 INR6938 Lecture 1 The Emperor arrives. The first major change occurred when the Portuguese royal family (and myriad hangers on) fled Portugal in the face of invasion by Napoleon (further reading). For the first time, Brazil’s government was located in Brazil, rather than nearly 5000 miles away in Portugal. Despite some long overdue development, and an opening of trade, though, politically little changed. The Emperor still ruled, and all important officials were Portuguese. Independent empire. When Napoleon was safely disposed of, the Portuguese Emperor returned to Lisbon, leaving his son (Pedro) in charge in Brazil. He eventually revolted, and Brazil became independent under Dom Pedro I. His son Dom Pedro II then succeeded him. The chapter by Fernando Henrique Cardoso provides some of the flavor of this era3. Compared to what came before, he was very progressive, but he ruled for half a century and exhausted his new ideas in a decade or so. Worse, he was reluctant to abolish slavery, which was not done until 1889 (yes, a quarter century after the US), and led to his being toppled in a coup.

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