Abstract

In the center of the present crisis of the Brazilian economy and society is the
crisis of the State. To understand this crisis, this paper makes a revision of the nature and the
role of the Brazilian State in the present and in the past. The paper argues that in peripheral
capitalism, like Brazilian, the State has played different roles and has produced different effects
as compared to the State of developed countries. Here the State is not only an essential
and fundamental component of the process of capital accumulation but has difficulty playing
the role of arbiter of class conflicts and competition between different interest groups.
Among other things, the nature of the Brazilian State has produced and reproduced increasing
inequality and structural heterogeneity.

JEL Classification: H11.