Introduction

The theme of modernisation (of the state, society, countries, the economy and the state apparatus) was the object of intense debate in the 20th century. The search was on to identify the reasons for underdevelopment and to find solutions to the obstacles faced by the so-called ‘Third World’ countries. According to the diagnosis, the reasons for underdevelopment were endogenous: low schooling, conservative elites, a traditional agrarian structure and a lack of infrastructure. The solution – it was claimed – was modernisation, which would occur by emulating the developed countries’ development model and institutions. However, modernisation recipes were criticised in the subsequent decades. Some contended that they were anti-historical and an imposition of the North American model. Others replied that economic and social modernisation would not lead automatically to political modernisation, that is, stable democracies (Huntington, 1968). Confronted with other theoretical frameworks, modernisation and its recipes were the object of criticism but without an evaluation of their role in overcoming some obstacles to Brazil's development.

There are three main types of modernisation, all with impacts on the state's role: first, social modernisation, in which the state is pressured by society to implement changes, that is, a process that develops in the society-to-state direction; second, social modernisation via the state, in which pressures to reform society come from the state, that is, in the state-to-society direction; and, third, modernisation of the state, in which the focus is the efficiency of the government apparatus, its most well-known expression being bureaucratisation, that is, a process that develops in the state–state direction.

Despite the theoretical and empirical production on modernisation, there have never been clear criteria by which changes are actually ‘modern’. Modernisation is associated with the idea of progress and of breaking with the past to the extent that the past is identified as an obstacle to development. Margetts (2010), based on the vast literature on the theme, identified three recurrent characteristics: first, elements of economic rationality, or incentives that foster changes by actors and institutions; second, the specialisation of tasks and a professionalisation based on technical and scientific knowledge; and, third, the formal definition of rules and standardisation of procedures. This study focuses on the second characteristic.

The study analyses the modernisation of the Brazilian state (in the state–state sense), associating it with the professionalisation of the federal bureaucracy and following the framework of the literature on state capacity.