Between Neo-developmentalism and orthodoxy: Economic policy under Dilma Rousseff’s government

Abstract

The following article aims to expose the reasons behind the failure of Dilma Rousseff’s government’s economic policy, seeking as it did to implement developmental strategies such as the Plano Brasil Maior [Greater Brazil Plan], which aimed to keep GDP growth high while maintaining the policy to reduce social inequality. Our hypothesis is that although national and international economic factors determined the strategy’s failure, the lack of consistency in the economic policy adopted was also a factor, which sought to use developmental tools in a highly conservative manner and abandoned them in the face of emerging fiscal and inflationary pressures, which were highly overvalued by the representatives of financial capital. Although Rousseff’s government attempted to challenge the interests of financial capital, it swiftly backed down and abandoned policies based on the growth of public investment and increased consumption. It therefore failed to achieve the benefits of accelerated development and the monetary stability so lauded by the financial sectors and their associates within the business sector.