Abstract, "State-Society Dynamics in Contemporary Brazilian Land Reform" by Wendy Wolford

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State-Society Dynamics in Contemporary Brazilian Land Reform 
by Wendy Wolford

Over the past 15 years, land reform has returned from the “dustbin of history” to serve again as a viable policy option. Much has been written about its resurgence, with the research tending to focus narrowly on the role of prices, policies, and politics in shaping the design and outcome of distribution. While these are necessary elements to understand, their reification neglects the critical element of process. Land reform programs are implemented by an array of government actors and negotiated on the ground by beneficiaries, social movement activists, large farmers, and the general public. A messy assemblage of actors and interests shapes both the design and the outcome of distribution. Qualitative analysis of the federal agency in charge of land reform in Brazil, the Instituto Nacional de Colonização e Reforma Agrária (National Institute of Colonization and Agrarian Reform—INCRA), reveals that, in the context of increased citizen participation and reduced funding, the agency must work together with social movement activists to perform its task. The analysis suggests that the study of state-society relations today requires a new vocabulary that highlights substance and process rather than form.

Abstract, Deconstructing the Post-Neoliberal State: Intimate Perspectives on Contemporary Brazil by Wendy Wolford and John D. French

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Deconstructing the Post-Neoliberal State: Intimate Perspectives on Contemporary Brazil 
by Wendy Wolford and John D. French

The last three presidential administrations in Brazil, including the two presidencies of Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva (2002–2010) and the first term of Dilma Rousseff (2010-2014), have complicated widely held understandings of the Brazilian state. It is no longer possible to characterize recent governments as simply authoritarian, patrimonial, or divorced from the experiences of the Brazilian public (see Pereira in this issue). The path to “deepening democracy” (Fung, Wright, and Abers, 2003) has not been an easy or straightforward one, as recent protests and ongoing corruption scandals have shown, and yet a brief history of the recent past illustrates dramatic change. In 1985 a 21-year dictatorship—what Peter Evans (1989) called a “developmental state”—was defeated only to be followed by debt-fueled crisis and a decade of economic stagnation. Hyperinflation and economic uncertainty led in turn to an era of neoliberal governance, including the privatization of state-owned enterprises, reduction of trade protections, and establishment of regional free-market zones (Baker, 2002; Corrales, 2012; Power, 1998; Wolford, 2005).