Explaining infrastructure underperformance in Brazil: cash, political institutions, corruption, and policy Gestalts

ABSTRACT

Brazil’s infrastructure underperforms compared to that of peer emerging economies. Why? The political institutions of coalitional presidentialism with strong federalism undermine rational national planning. Politicians’ incentives to distribute ‘pork’ combine with sector-specific oligopoly characteristics, offering fertile ground for corruption. Yet the greatest challenge is low infrastructure investment, a consequence of weak private capital markets and regulatory inconsistency. Recent center-right governments improved infrastructure service delivery without stimulating investment, while center-left governments raised investment, but undermined public finances and efficiency. Greater technocratic consensus across the partisan divide on reforms to stimulate investment is one positive consequence of Brazil’s current crisis.

KEYWORDS:

• Infrastructure
• Brazil
• public policy
• political institutions
• coalitional presidentialism
• clientelism
• corruption
• transportation
• energy
• telecommunications

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the Centre for Latin American Studies and the Australian National University, Canberra, the Special Issue editors, Sean Burges and Tracey Fenwick, and Edmund Amann, Fabricio H. Chagas Bastos, Jeffrey Checkel, Claúdio Fritschtak, Christopher Gibson, Al Montero, Gesner Oliveira, Armando Pinheiro, and Edison B. da Silva Filho for their help or comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Leslie Elliott Armijo teaches Development at the School for International Studies, Simon Fraser University, Canada. She studies the public policies of emerging powers in Latin America and Asia. Recent publications include Unexpected Outcomes: How Emerging Economies Survived the Global Financial Crisis (ed. with C. Wise and S. N. Katada, Brookings, 2015); The Financial Statecraft of Emerging Powers: Shield and Sword in Asia and Latin America (ed. with S. N. Katada, Palgrave, 2014); and “Can International Relations and Comparative Politics Be Policy Relevant? Theory and Methods for Incorporating Political Context” (with S. Rhodes, Politics & Policy, 2015). Visit her website at http://www.lesliearmijo.org/"www.lesliearmijo.org.

Sybil Rhodes, Ph.D. in Political Science, Stanford, 2002, is professor of political science and international relations and director of the MA program in International Studies at the Universidad del CEMA in Buenos Aires, Argentina. She previously served as assistant and then associate professor of political science at Western Michigan University, where she maintains an affiliation. She is the author of Social Movements and Free-Market Capitalism in Latin America (SUNY Press) and various professional articles and book chapters on the national and international politics of diverse policy arenas, including migration and citizenship, agricultural biotechnology, and telecommunications regulation.

Additional information

Funding

Leslie Elliott Armijo received funding from the International Scholars and Specialists Program (ISSP) of the Government of Brazil to hold a Visiting Professorship at the Instituto de Relações Internacionais, Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil in 2015.