Power and the Ruling Classes in Northeast Brazil

Chilcote, Ronald H.

doi:10.1017/cbo9780511527531

Cited by 36 publications

(4 citation statements)

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“…In order to understand the formation of the society and the modern state in Brazil, one inevitably has to consider the role played by the country’s rural oligarchy. Describing the distribution of power within Brazil, Chilcote (1990, p. 10), for example, notes that the «ruling class has traditionally been composed of a small group of families whose power stems from the ownership of property.»…”

Section: A Common History Of Landlords (Or the Lack Thereof)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Cana, café, cacau: agrarian structure and educational inequalities in Brazil

Wegenast

2010

RHE / JILAEH

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The present paper explores the relationship between agrarian structure and human capital formation between and within Brazil's federal units. It is argued that whether states' agriculture is in plantation style, based on cheap coerced labor, or organized around family farming matters for the formulation of educational policies. According to the main claim, landlords were not interested in paying higher taxes to educate the masses and curtailed the expansion of schooling in order to keep a cheap workforce and maintain their monopoly over the decision-making process. Describing several episodes in Brazil's history of public instruction, the paper stresses the distributional conflicts over education as well as the rural aristocracy's resistance towards broadly-targeted, citizenship-enhancing educational policies. The descriptive evidence is complemented by statistical analyses employing historical as well as more recent data. It is shown that states characterized by a more egalitarian land distribution, which are not under RESUMENEl presente artículo estudia la relació n entre la estructura agraria y la formació n de capital humano, tanto dentro como entre las unidades federales de Brasil. Se argumenta que la agricultura de los Estados es de estilo plantació n -basado en mano de obra forzada barata, o por el contrario organizada alrededor de la granja familiar -es crucial para la formulació n de las políticas educativas. De acuerdo a esta hipó tesis, los propietarios de la tierra no estaban interesados en pagar impuestos má s altos para educar a las masas y restringieron la expansió n escolar con la intenció n de mantener una mano de obra barata y el monopolio del proceso de toma de decisiones. A través de la descripció n de distintos episodios de la historia de la instrucció n pú blica en Brasil, el artículo muestra los conflictos distributivos sobre la educació n y la resistencia de la aristocracia rural en relació n con los má s amplios objetivos ciudadanos para intensificar las políticas educativas. La evidencia descriptiva se complementa con el aná lisis estadístico de datos histó ricos y recientes. Se muestra que los Estados con una distribució n má s igualitaria de la tierra, que no está n bajo el dominio de poderosos propietarios de la tierra, tuvieron una mejor cobertura y calidad educativa. Asimismo, demostramos que invirtieron má s en escolarizació n.Palabras clave: desigualdad de tierra, latifundistas, educació n, Brasil

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Section: A Common History Of Landlords (Or the Lack Thereof)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Cana, café, cacau: agrarian structure and educational inequalities in Brazil

Wegenast

2010

RHE / JILAEH

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“…In this it follows works on 'hysteresis' by David (1985) and Arthur (1989) on the lock-in of specific technologies based on increasing returns. In addition to these approaches, persistence of institutions can arise in models in which social conventions or norms emerge from local interactions and learning (e.g.. Young, 1998, Bednar and Page, 2006) Woodward (1955), Wright (1986), Alston and Ferric (1999), and Ransom and Sutch (2001), for Colombia, see Dix (1967), Wilde (1978), Hartlyn (1988) and Kline (1999), and for Brazil, see Chilcote (1990) and Hagopian (1996). ments (Dixit, 1989a,b, Coate and Morris, 1999).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Persistence of Power, Elites, and Institutions

Acemoğlu

Robinson

2008

American Economic Review

795

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“…Both these methods were extensively used in the U.S. South after the Civil War and are still present in many Latin American countries such as Brazil, Bolivia or Colombia. For the U.S. South after the Civil War, seeKey (1949),Woodward (1955),Wright (1986),Alston and Ferrie (1999), andRansom and Sutch (2001), for Colombia, seeDix (1967),Wilde (1978),Hartlyn (1988) andKline (1999), and for Brazil, seeChilcote (1990) andHagopian (1996).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Persistence of Power, Elites, and Institutions

2006

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We construct a model of simultaneous change and persistence in institutions. The model consists of landowning elites and workers, and the key economic decision concerns the form of economic institutions regulating the transaction of labor (e.g., competitive markets versus labor repression). The main idea is that equilibrium economic institutions are a result of the exercise of de jure and de facto political power. A change in political institutions, for example a move from nondemocracy to democracy, alters the distribution of de jure political power, but the elite can intensify their investments in de facto political power, such as lobbying or the use of paramilitary forces, to partially or fully offset their loss of de jure power. In the baseline model, equilibrium changes in political institutions have no effect on the (stochastic) equilibrium distribution of economic institutions, leading to a particular form of persistence in equilibrium institutions, which we refer to as invariance. When the model is enriched to allow for limits on the exercise of de facto power by the elite in democracy or for costs of changing economic institutions, the equilibrium takes the form of a Markov regime-switching process with state dependence. Finally, when we allow for the possibility that changing political institutions is more difficult than altering economic institutions, the model leads to a pattern of captured democracy, whereby a democratic regime may survive, but choose economic institutions favoring the elite. The main ideas featuring in the model are illustrated using historical examples from the U.S. South, Latin America and Liberia.

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Power and the Ruling Classes in Northeast Brazil

Cited by 36 publications

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Cana, café, cacau: agrarian structure and educational inequalities in Brazil

Cana, café, cacau: agrarian structure and educational inequalities in Brazil

Persistence of Power, Elites, and Institutions

Persistence of Power, Elites, and Institutions

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