336.2
Lasting Effects of Marketization in Welfare State Policies - the Brazilian Case
Brazilian social policies have undergone similar transformations suffered by policies of other countries during the 1990s. Despite the dismantling of the Welfare State in Brazil has taken place even before its consolidation, the idea that public intervention to solve problems of poverty and inequality should be guided by principles and practices from the market had strength in that period, organizing efforts and investments during the government of President Fernando Henrique Cardoso (1994-1998 and 1999-2002). For this reason, the opposition to discourses and policies has identified them with what has been classified as the neoliberal bias of those years.
The election of President Luis Inácio Lula da Silva carried much of this criticism. Through his two successive terms (2003-2007 and 2008-2011), the government discourse and some new policies have been developed based on the assertion that their guidelines differed from those of his predecessor, by recovering the centrality of the State and by the privilege of the poorest. The decline in poverty rates eventually left the image of marketization of social policies even more distant. However, would it be marketization a process as ephemeral as a political-partisan government program? Would be changing policies in the passage between governments enough to restore a background of social security policies, as advocated in a Welfare State scenario?
The paper aims to present the hypothesis of the research on which it is based. According to it the changes occurred in those 1990s have produced effects that have being limiting the later possibilities of social policies development. More than that, despite the advances of the government of President Lula, the conditions that underlie the process of marketization maintain their historical and social validity, simultaneously restraining more steady changes and creating new challenges to analysts.