Ben Ross Schneider

Elisabeth B. Reynolds

Ezequiel Zylberberg

Since the early 2000s, state-led and innovation-focused strategies have characterized the approach to development pursued in countries around the world, such as China, India, and South Korea. Brazil, the largest and most industrialized economy in Latin America, demonstrates both the opportunities and challenges of this approach. Over the course of nearly 20 years, the Brazilian government enacted various policies and programs designed to strengthen the country’s capacity to innovate. It increased spending on science and technology, encouraged greater collaboration between industry and universities, and fostered the creation of new institutions whose primary aim was to facilitate greater private research and development (R&D) spending. In this book, the editors unite a diverse array of empirical contributions around a few key themes, including public policies, institutions and innovation ecosystems, and firms and industries, that collectively make the case for a new, forward-looking innovation agenda aimed at addressing persistent challenges and exploiting emerging opportunities in Brazil. Its conclusions offer valuable lessons for other developing and emerging economies seeking to accelerate innovation and growth in the modern age. With its interdisciplinary and wide-ranging contribution to the study of innovation, as well as attention to broader policy implications, this book will appeal to scholars and professionals alike.

Advancing Development in the 21st Century

Innovation in Brazil

Professor of Political Science Ben Ross Schneider

Business Politics and the State in Twentieth-Century Latin America

Sylvia Maxfield

Much of the debate about development in the past decade pitted proponents of unfettered markets against advocates of developmental states. Yet, in many developing countries what best explains variations in economic performance is not markets or states but rather the character of relations between business and government. The studies in Business and the State in Developing Countries identify a range of close, collaborative relations between bureaucrats and capitalists that enhance elements of economic performance and defy conventional expectations that such relations lead ineluctably to rent-seeking, corruption, and collusion. All based on extensive field research, the essays contrast collaborative and collusive relations in a wide range of developing countries, mostly in Latin America and Asia, and isolate the conditions under which collaboration is most likely to emerge and survive. The contributors highlight the crucial roles played by capable bureaucracies and strong business associations.

Business and the State in Developing Countries

Much of the current debate about development has pitted proponents of unfettered markets against advocates of developmental states. Yet, often what best explains variations in economic performance among developing countries is not markets or states but rather the character of relations between business and government. The contributors to Business and the State in Developing Countries identify a range of close, collaborative relations between bureaucrats and capitalists which enhance elements of economic performance and defy conventional expectations that such relations lead ineluctably to rent-seeking, corruption, and collusion. All based on extensive field research, the essays contrast collaborative and collusive relations in a wide range of developing countries, most of them in Latin America and Asia, and isolate the conditions under which collaboration is most likely to emerge and survive. The contributors highlight the crucial roles played by capable bureaucracies and strong business associations.

Brazil was one of the most successful examples of state-led industrialization in the post-1945 era. Yet, on the surface, the Brazilian bureaucracy appears highly fragmented, personalized, and ad-hoc. Ben Ross Schneider looks behind this façade to explain how the Brazilian bureaucracy contributes to industrialization by analyzing career patterns and appointments which structure incentives and power more than formal organizations or institutions. Politics and personalism, of the right sort, Schneider argues, can in fact enhance policy effectiveness and state capacity.

Elite Bureaucrats and Industrial Policy in Authoritarian Brazil

Politics within the State

This book argues that Latin America has a distinctive, enduring form of hierarchical capitalism characterized by multinational corporations, diversified business groups, low skills, and segmented labor markets. Over time, institutional complementarities knit features of corporate governance and labor markets together and thus contributed to institutional resiliency. Political systems generally favored elites and insiders who further reinforced existing institutions and complementarities. Hierarchical capitalism has not promoted rising productivity, good jobs, or equitable development, and the efficacy of development strategies to promote these outcomes depends on tackling negative institutional complementarities. This book is intended to open a new debate on the nature of capitalism in Latin America and link that discussion to related research on comparative capitalism in other parts of the world.

Ben Ross Schneider

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