Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Figures and Tables
- Acknowledgments
- The Market and the Masses in Latin America
- Part I Introduction and Theory
- Part II Mass Beliefs about Market Policies in Latin America
- Part III Mass Support for Reform in Brazil
- 6 THE ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES AND ELITE RHETORIC OF MARKET REFORM IN BRAZIL
- 7 HOW MANY BRAZILIANS SUPPORT MARKET REFORMS?
- 8 WHICH BRAZILIANS SUPPORT MARKET REFORMS?
- Part IV Conclusion
- Survey Data Appendix
- References
- Index
- Titles in the series
7 - HOW MANY BRAZILIANS SUPPORT MARKET REFORMS?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 August 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Figures and Tables
- Acknowledgments
- The Market and the Masses in Latin America
- Part I Introduction and Theory
- Part II Mass Beliefs about Market Policies in Latin America
- Part III Mass Support for Reform in Brazil
- 6 THE ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES AND ELITE RHETORIC OF MARKET REFORM IN BRAZIL
- 7 HOW MANY BRAZILIANS SUPPORT MARKET REFORMS?
- 8 WHICH BRAZILIANS SUPPORT MARKET REFORMS?
- Part IV Conclusion
- Survey Data Appendix
- References
- Index
- Titles in the series
Summary
Brazilians do not want renationalization, the end of the market, or the closing of the country!
– Cristóvam Buarque, as Workers Party (PT) governor of Brasília (1999 to 2002), in a plea made to his party to moderate its stance on economic issuesAccording to conventional scholarly wisdom, Lula's historic election victory in 2002 was the culmination of a successful journey by him and much of his party to the center of Brazil's political spectrum: “Lula Light” finally seduced the median voter by advocating moderate economic policies in his fourth try at the presidency. Existing scholarship, however, provides only a one-sided view of this process. Lula and the PT's moderation is well-documented (Bruhn 2004; Hunter 2007; Samuels 2004). In contrast, little is known about what Brazil's median voter thinks about the country's new economic policies, despite their status as the main source of elite contestation in the New Republic (Mainwaring et al. 2000). This chapter addresses that gap by describing the contours of aggregate opinion toward the various market policies in Brazil, focusing on differences in popularity across policies and time. In other words, I describe how many Brazilians, or more precisely what proportion of Brazilians, have supported each market reform. I also provide further evidence to support the bottom-up, consumption-based argument about why some policies have been more popular than others. (This chapter does not focus on top-down influences because of the finding in Chapter 4 that they have a weak influence on aggregate beliefs.)
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- The Market and the Masses in Latin AmericaPolicy Reform and Consumption in Liberalizing Economies, pp. 191 - 228Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009