Luiz Carlos Bresser-Pereira
Revista de Administração Pública 38 (4): 543-60, Julho/Agosto 2004. Trabalho escrito para aula inaugural do Programa de Especialização em Gestão Pública Contemporânea oferecido pela FUNDAP. Março de 2004.
Twenty years after the transition to democracy in Brazil we realize that political and institutional development was sizeable: democracy is today consolidated, and its institutions are being continuously improved. The 1995/98 Public Management Reform is part of this larger process. In so far as it responded to a social need, and enhanced senior civil servants, it is being gradually implemented at federal, state and municipal level. Social development was also significant since 1980, as the improvement of social indicators demonstrate. This was possible because social expenditures per capita increased 43.4% between 1980 and 2000. Yet, in the same period, income per capita increased just 8.5%. In a first moment, the debt crisis, high inflation, and a crisis of the state were behind semi-stagnation. Since price stability was achieved in 1994, equivocated macroeconomic policies, following a conventional orthodoxy, explain the bad outcomes.
