Globalization and Recent Political Transitions in Brazil

Abstract

This article discusses political transitions in Brazil in the context of globalization. It focuses on the political legacies that offered resistance to external processes and on the emergence of “new checks and balances” that constituted the relevant conditions for processes of political decision-making from the 1980s to 2002. It also shows that the management of economic policies, combined with the broader political process, was an important dimension of these political transitions. The article concludes by emphasizing the challenges that exist in the treatment of social issues and the connections between the domestic and the international agendas.