The paper assesses the debates between influential writers and decision makers involved in the fast-paced industrialization Brazil embarked upon in the 1950s. Although the period was shaped by high rates of economic growth championed by charismatic nationalist leaders, disagreements pertaining to the role and configuration of the developmental state gave rise to a hybrid agenda of development which combined both liberalizing and interventionist strategies. Through precarious political compromises, persuasion, and a high degree of demiurgic ambition, the federal Brazilian state advanced a bold project of material and symbolic modernization of important sectors of the national society. In the end, however, a combination of internal disputes and a long legacy of socio-spatial inequalities prevented the achievement of a sustainable course of national development, thus bequeathing the country several unanswered issues which gain further relevance today as Brazil assumes a relevant position within the realms of an ever more complex and interdependent global economy.
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Ioris et al. (2013) studied this question.
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