A Critical Perspective On Development Economics
Category: Populism
Brazil's Election in the Shadow of the Impeachment
August 24, 2018 August 24, 2018 Carolina AlvesLeave a comment
Earlier this month the final deadline arrived for political parties in Brazil to register their candidates for the presidential election in October 2018. The official launch of candidates allows us to discuss more concretely the political forces and players that will be shaping the election. It means that coalitions, alliances, and vice-president choices have taken place. So we asked, what can be said about the first candidates leading the polls? What are the main political forces underlying this election?
The Brazilian political landscape has been extremely polarised since the impeachment of president Dilma Rousseff in 2016. If the left-right dichotomy has recently been considered blurry or outdated, in Brazil one can argue that, due to the impeachment, this dichotomy has a new face, with the coup winners on one extreme and the coup losers on the other.
The nuances between right and left on the political spectrum have largely been overshadowed due to this dichotomy, with one side leading a moral crusade for a clean and corruption-free country and the other side highlighting the ongoing attack on democracy. The political mayhem reached its peak with Lula's trial and conviction in April, which has led to a great deal of uncertainty over this period (see recent Lula's Op-Ed from prison in the NYT).
President Termer may have been able to "keep the markets calm in" throughout such political instability, but Brazil's economic recovery has been weaker than expected, hardships for many families have increased (see IBGE indicators for increases in income inequality, poverty, unemployment and insecurity) and the country has just set a new record for homicides at 63,880 deaths in 2017, with violence against women also increasing. There is a lot at stake in this election.Read More »
On the Journals: Western Populism and Economic Development
April 17, 2017 April 17, 2017 Ingrid Harvold KvangravenLeave a comment
The election of Donald Trump last year and Britain voting to leave the EU ('Brexit') left a lot of people angry and confused. While there was a lot of in-depth media coverage trying to make sense of the phenomenon immediately after the fact, the academic analysis is as usual late to the game because of the lag associated with academic publishing
Only these past couple of months have academic articles dealing with the issue started appearing. Real World Economics Review, for example, published an excellent special issue on Trumponomics in March. Although the analysis tends to be Western-centric, there have been a few notable pieces that take a more global perspective and/or deal with economic consequences for the developing world.Read More »
The Developing Economics blog takes critical approach to development economics. It seeks to stimulate debate and critical reflection on economic development among academics and practitioners from all relevant fields.
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