In the 1930s, during the authoritarian government of Getúlio Vargas, the Brazilian civil service reform movement began. Thirty-five years later, the actual administrative practices of the country did not adequately reflect the philosophy underlying this movement, a philosophy drawn from the reform experience and public administration theories of the United States and Western Europe. This book examines why these ideas, when transplanted to another cultural setting, did not take root and, further, why they unexpectedly proved to be most applicable in Brazil during periods of autocratic rule.

These questions are highly relevant not only to Brazil, but equally to other developing countries struggling to create more effective national administrative systems. For this reason, and in order to evaluate the Brazilian reform experience within its total context (social, economic, and political), Lawrence S. Graham develops a broad conceptual framework. His focus is on the years between 1945 and 1964, a period which allowed a relatively free play of political forces but, ironically, produced a diminution in the success of the reform efforts when compared with the authoritarian governments which preceded and followed it. After a comparative consideration of the public administration theories behind the reform movement, Graham examines this period in terms of the political environment, the functions of political patronage, and the influences of a nascent national party. Finally, he juxtaposes the conditions and course of the Brazilian reform experience with those of the United States and Great Britain.

Graham’s study of the Brazilian example, which does not pass judgment on the prevailing public personnel system, reveals the importance of understanding the total cultural context within which administrative principles are put into practice. Such an approach, wider than generally held in the field of public administration, may prove to be the most vital factor in the future of the civil service in Brazil and several other countries facing the same problems.

Despite worldwide interest in the Portuguese Revolution of 1974, Portugal remained for most people a little known and poorly understood country, neglected for years by social scientists. Editors Graham and Makler brought together for the first time in one substantive volume most of the leading social science experts on Portugal.

The contributors' highly original research represents the best work generated by the International Conference Group on Modern Portugal at its two major conferences held in 1973 and 1976. The result is a comprehensive collection of essays discussing in detail the events leading up to the revolution, the causes of the military coup, and the movement of a society on the brink of revolutionary upheaval toward open, democratic parliamentary elections.

As the first interdisciplinary study to span fifty years of Portuguese history from the Estado Novo of 1926 to the eventual social democratic republic, this book stands alone in its field. The specialist as well as the general reader will find insights into the dynamics of Portugal's people, politics, and economics.

The transition from authoritarian to democratic government in Brazil unleashed profound changes in government and society that cannot be adequately understood from any single theoretical perspective. The great need, say Graham and Wilson, is a holistic vision of what occurred in Brazil, one that opens political and economic analysis to new vistas. This need is answered in The Political Economy of Brazil, a groundbreaking study of late twentieth-century Brazilian issues from a policy perspective.

The book was an outgrowth of a year-long policy research project undertaken jointly by the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs and the Teresa Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies, both at the University of Texas at Austin. In this book, several noted scholars focus on specific issues central to an understanding of the political and economic choices that were under debate in Brazil. Their findings reveal that for Brazil the break with the past—the authoritarian regime—could not be complete due to economic choices made in the 1960s and 1970s, and also the way in which economic resources committed at that time locked the government into a relatively limited number of options in balancing external and internal pressures.

These conclusions will be important for everyone working in Latin American and Third World development.