Why are social policies made in Brazil? Notes on legitimation strategies in the two most recent federal administrations

Abstract

The neoliberal reforms that were implemented in Brazil in the ’1990s were, although delayed, part of the wave of conservative and neoliberal reforms implanted in the developed countries. They had a profound impact on social policies, but the changes they entailed were justified as being a reform of the state rather than of the social policies. They aimed at the de-politicization of public administration. Lula da Silva’s social-democratic administration tried to legitimize its social policy by prioritizing the creation of some spaces for society’s participation in a public sphere, but it did not reach the same results as the local administrations of the same party. Therefore, this study focuses the institutional changes affecting that policy that have been proposed by the two most recent federal administrations as surrogates of a discursive grounding of different reform projects. Key words: Social policies; Public sphere; State reform; Lula’s administration; Brasil.