Changing Inequalities across Urban Brazil before and after the 2014 Illiberal Turn

• In Event: How Politics and Policy Shape Social Outcomes

Abstract

Journalist and scholarly accounts of Brazil’s post-2014 politics similarly emphasize the country’s illiberal turn and its deleterious consequences for inequalities of multiple kinds. Yet, few analyses systematically consider whether and how major city governments in Brazil have responded to nationwide political shifts in ways that have mediated such changing inequalities. This paper moves toward such an analysis by assessing change over time in a unique measure of inequality called “Inequality in Infant Mortality” (IIMR). IIMR assesses the maldistribution of premature death among the children of mothers from different racial categories and educational status groups. The paper describes an approach to measuring IIMR and then analyzes how this indicator changed across Brazil’s largest capital cities during two periods: the 2003 to 2014 period of more progressive national rule, and the post-2014 period of far more illiberal rule. Preliminary results suggest two provisional findings, both in need of further verification. First, even during the 2003 to 2014 period of more progressive national rule, some major cities witnessed surprisingly modest improvements – and sometimes even a worsening of – of IIMR. Second, even amidst a nationwide trend of worsening inequality since 2014, civil and political society actors have nevertheless sought to address nationwide changes in inequality through nontrivial interventions into subnational politics. The paper then discusses the city-level politics of inequality reduction during both periods. It concludes by pointing to a set of possible explanations for how local democratic politics may be mediating changes in inequalities, even amidst Brazil’s profoundly illiberal turn in national politics.

Author

• Christopher L Gibson, Simon Fraser University