International Journal of Political Economy
Volume 43, Issue 4, 2014
0891-1916 (Print), 1558-0970 (Online) Plataforma: Taylor & Francis Group |
Acaba de ser publicado no International Journal of Political Economy (vol 43, issue 4, 2014-15) o dossiê “Celso Furtado and Development Theory”. São seis artigos escritos por especialistas do Brasil e de outros países.
Publicamos abaixo o resumo de cada artigo com seu link para a página da IJPE, revista que está disponível para aquisição na plataforma Taylor & Francis Group.
Editor's Introduction
Policy developments in the Latin American region over the past decade have brought to the forefront the question of the developmentalist state and have revived some aspects of the structuralist views that had once become popular in development economics. Latin American structuralism originates from a long tradition going back to the founding of the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), as those ideas emerged, were championed, and became systematized in the writings of celebrated economists such Raúl Prebisch and Celso Furtado during the early postwar years. During the past three decades, this heterodox perspective had seemingly disappeared with the triumph of neoliberal ideas, especially as espoused in the Washington Consensus. Indeed, after the various coups d'état that plagued much of Latin America, ECLAC's developmentalism was largely sidelined until after the end of these dictatorial regimes. At the same time, with the triumph of neoclassical general-equilibrium modelling, even development theory itself with its interdisciplinary focus seemed passé and it largely disappeared within mainstream economics curricula, especially in North American universities. Despite the international financial crisis, neoclassical ideas continue to retain a stronghold within the economics profession and have shown a certain degree of resilience. There is little evidence that this will change substantively during the postfinancial-crisis era, but on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the passing of Celso Furtado, we would like to offer readers of International Journal of Political Economy an exposition and analysis of the works of some of these important pioneers of the developmentalist perspective, as the latter can be understood through the interdisciplinary prism of the works of Furtado in this special issue dedicated to his ideas.
Abstract
This short article describes the life and times of the Brazilian economist Celso Furtado (1920–2004). It underlines the four major periods of his activities and evolving thought: as head of the Division of Development at the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), in Santiago de Chile; in the Northeast of Brazil, where he became a man of action as head of the Sudene (Superintendency for the Development of the Northeast), a governmental agency to foster development in this region; during his long exile in France as a professor of economics; and his return to Brazil to be minister of culture, then becoming a major political and moral point of reference in the country. The article also highlights his main contributions to the theory of underdevelopment, to the economic history and regional problems of Brazil, and to the cultural dimension of development.
Abstract
Celso Furtado, a creator of Latin American structuralist political economy, was riveted on the construction of a viable national development project for Brazil. As a sophisticated advocate for structural change, he represented forward-looking reformism based in a pragmatic analysis of underdevelopment—“the” underlying condition of peripheral nations. The objective of this article is to offer both a synthesis and an evaluation of his contributions to the political economy of development economics. The hypothesis of this article is that Furtado’s methodological/analytical stance—in particular, (1) his dynamic, historically contextualized, approach and (2) his tendency to center development on technological capacity—merits broader acceptance and greater acclaim. An ancillary hypothesis maintains that, whereas Furtado’s work paralleled that of early U.S. institutionalism (particularly that of Veblen), he and his followers have thus far missed an important opportunity to explore the complementarities and synergies that might have been forged to renovate the Furtadian developmentalist perspective.