How Social Developmentalism Reframed Social Policy in Brazil

This paper proposes to critically situate how social developmentalism reshaped social policy in Brazil in the 2000s, to stimulate access to credit and to financial markets, thereby fostering a transition towards a mass-consumption society. This structural move is radically distinct from the very framework which inspired the tenets of early Latin American structuralist thought in the post-war period. Whereas seminal structuralism neglected the role of social policy, Brazilian social developmentalism reframed it to broaden access to consumer credit and other financial services, such as insurances. In this new financialised framework, social policy has been used to underwrite a financial inclusion model that overturned classic tenets of social policy. As a result, not only household debt has abruptly escalated, but also social insurance and welfare benefits have been partially absorbed as financial rents, deepening economic insecurity and social vulnerability.