Brazil experienced significant social, political, and economic transformations during the second half of the twentieth century. The country weathered multiple political regimes, with democratic periods (1946–1964, 1985–present) interrupted by a military dictatorship (1964–1985). Rapid industrialization generated jobs, wealth, and a new national capital (Brasília), and led to massive urbanization as rural residents streamed into cities seeking employment and a better quality of life. Tens of millions of Brazilian citizens gained access to formal employment during this era, which provided the necessary public and private wealth to expand access to health care, education, and basic infrastructure. But Brazil also remained a highly unequal country throughout its impressive economic expansion. The majority of the population lacked access to essential services and resources, including decent housing, clean water, sewage, and a basic income. In this chapter, we explore how Brazil built the foundations for the democratic pathways that would prove fundamental for improving well-being in the twenty-first century.

One of the greatest challenges in the twenty-first century is to address large, deep, and historic deficits in human development. A crucial question we explore in this book is how democracy – with all of its messy, contested, and time-consuming features – works to advance well-being and improve citizens’ lives. Broad evidence demonstrates that democracies provide more public goods and higher standards of living, on average, for citizens than authoritarian countries (Przeworski et al. 1999: 264–265; Lake and Baum 2001; Besley and Kudamatsu 2006; Brown and Mobarak 2009; Acemoglu et al. 2013; Harding and Stasavage 2014; Hodgson 2017; Gerring et al. 2015). We move beyond the conventional explanations – elections, political competition, and partisanship – to develop theory connecting core dimensions of democracy – participation, citizenship, and an inclusive state – to improvements in well-being. In doing so, we illuminate how these dimensions form “pathways” that help citizens and governments achieve better human development outcomes.

Over the last three decades, governments and international development agencies have recognized the importance of women’s status and gendered exclusion for the overall population’s well-being. Women are more likely to face poverty and greater social, economic, cultural, and political barriers to address their vulnerabilities than men. A focus on women and girls is normatively justified given that they constitute more than half of the world’s population. Yet beyond their numerical size, there is growing consensus that women’s status affects development outcomes for everyone (Sen 1999; Nussbaum 2011). Historical and existing barriers for women and girls to fully develop as individuals – due to patriarchy, paternalism, and other forms of gender discrimination – violate international human rights norms and hinder instrumental goals to further broader human development. For instance, research reveals that gender discrimination that creates barriers to girls’ education has negative spillover effects in a number of domains related to development.

To better capture the varied institutions, programs, and policies associated with a thicker description of democracy, we use mixed-methods research to evaluate connections between local participatory institutions, federal social programs, local state capacity, and outcomes associated with well-being. Our complementary, mixed-methods research provides a thorough evaluation of the connections between democratic performance and well-being. Our quantitative analysis identifies general relationships within data covering an unusually large number of observations at a remarkably granular level. These trends lay the foundation for qualitative work, which unpacks the local, specific causal mechanisms driving relationships between democracy and well-being across Brazil. Our research thus leverages very rich data, considerable variation across Brazil’s municipalities, and decades of in-country experience among the coauthors to build theory and test hypotheses in ways that would be impossible in other contexts. The result is thorough analysis that improves our understanding of democracy and human development in Brazil, and a platform to improve local democratic performance around the world.

The geopolitics of national legal systems involves some very real stakes. It bears on numerous concrete controversies. It may mean the difference, for example, between trying a case in a chosen jurisdiction and having that case dismissed. In the United States, judges may refuse to hear a lawsuit if it can be tried more conveniently in another country. That preliminary question depends on a judicial determination of the adequacy of the alternative forum. Only if the other legal system meets the requisite standard of fitness may the judge consider dismissing the case.

Latin American countries have many laws and legal institutions similar to those in continental Europe and the United States. The region’s legal history is closely tied to developments in the West. Beginning in the 1500s, Spain and Portugal ruled the region for approximately 300 years. After national independence in the early nineteenth century, Latin American leaders looked to other European models and the US constitution. The legal rules of private transactions, criminal justice, court procedures, and administrative actions are all patterned on continental European sources. Legal borrowings from these same countries continue to this day. In addition, early national constitutions were heavily indebted to the 1787 US charter. Constitutional reasoning has also increasingly become influenced of late by Anglo-American legal thought. Many Latin American jurists quite purposefully emphasize these connections, and comparative legal scholars around the world have generally confirmed it. Latin American law is part of the European legal tradition, albeit marked by US constitutional influence.

The fictions of Latin American law play a recognizable role in global governance. They do so, constitutively, by influencing global perceptions of Latin American legal systems. This is not to say that global rule-making does not mostly depend on raw sovereign power. No need to be naive about it. A particular state’s economic and military might certainly plays a key role in global politics. It is clearly the world’s most powerful nations that drive the geopoliltical agenda.

Latin America’s close nexus to European law remains relevant to this day. It is not simply an event in the past or the sum total of earlier legal transplants from Europe. It is a continuing operational idea within Latin American legal communities. It characterizes the still predominant legal consciousness that mainstream jurists promote. Lawyers and judges commonly cite European legal sources. Legal textbooks often survey the relevant laws in Europe first, before explaining national law on the subject. Legislative proposals frequently track European legal developments. And, legal scholars regularly draw on European doctrinal sources. Legal Europeanness represents, for most of the twentieth century, the dominant form of Latin American legal thought.

Latin America’s kinship with Europe is not the unrivaled image of law in the region. A very different paradigm also prevails. From this perspective, underdevelopment, authoritarianism, crime, and corruption overwhelm the formal legal order. The laws do not generate economic development and political stability. Public officials prove incapable of separating their legal duties from personal gain. Courts and law enforcement are unequal to their tasks. Taken all together, it amounts to a quite damning picture. National legal institutions have, by most accounts, failed.