Advances, contradictions and limits of PT governments

Abstract

This article departs from two contradictions in order to examine the economic and political crises in Brazil: a general contradiction between the inclusive principles of the democratic transition and the excluding principles of the transition to neoliberalism, and a more concrete contradiction between the ambitions of the PT and the macroeconomic policy “tripod” imposed in 1999. In favourable circumstances, the PT governments could disarm the political right, demobilise the workers and disconnect the radical left from its social base. In adverse circumstances, those contradictions triggered the convergence of the economic and political crises, destroyed the political alliances that supported the PT, and partially reversed the economic, distributive and social advances achieved in the 2000s. These processes demonstrated that was lasting in the experience of the federal administrations led by the PT was their neoliberal economic base, and what was unsustainable was the distributional policy superimposed to that economic model. These tensions were destructive for the social basis of the government, and they have supported the rise of a New Right in the country.