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Pernambuco's Political Elite and the Recife Law School
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 December 2015
Extract
This study explores the convergent ground of two separate research projects: an analysis of the role of the state of Pernambuco in the Brazilian federation between 1889 and 1937, and a forthcoming study of the Recife Law School. The first part of this presentation will discuss the definition of the political elite, describe its composition, and examine the theme of continuity and change over the period of study. The second part will focus on the Law School per se, the principal vehicle for the training of the political elite.
Pernambuco's political elite constitutes less a model for other Brazilian states than a phenomenon specific to Pernambuco's own historical role. This elite may be examined systematically, although only in the broadest sense. For one thing, its membership never remained static, but changed constantly according to the ebb and flow of political life. Relative power within an elite is not easily measurable; nor does there exist a single elite; rather, one observes a fluid set of power relationships, arrayed vertically according to levels of influence and authority, and horizontally from small urban interest nuclei through local elites to subgrous scattered across regional, economic, and social networks.
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- Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 1981
References
1 The data for this study has been made machine readable and been analyzed with the use of the SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences, Version 5.0). Percentages refer to adjusted frequencies that omit cases with either missing data or data irrelevant to the statistical problem. For a broader view of Pernambuco’s role in the Old Republic, see Levine, Robert M., Pernambuco in the Brazilian Federation, 1889–1937, Stanford, 1978.Google Scholar
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6 Compiled from da Silva Maia, Newton, Apontimentos para a historia da Escola de Engenharia de Pernambuco, Recife, 1967, pp. 43–54.Google Scholar
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8 Political elite members of this group, defined as those directly related to Imperial Senators or titleholders of barão or higher rank, comprised 30% of the sample up to 1911 and dropped to 19% for elite members reaching twenty years of age in 1911 and after.
9 Twenty-four percent of those politically active in 1910-11 “broke” with the state establishment, supporting Dantas Barreto’s candidacy.
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* Political office in another state (17%); a professional career in part or entirely elsewhere (about 31%, with some leeway for possible multiple responses); employment in a major interstate agency (5%); out-of-state birth; or, for the older generation political office of major importance elsewhere under the Empire.
** AWAYJOB: 62%; 22%; 16%; FOREIGN: 23%; 41%; 46%. The first comparison is statistically significant to the level of 0.0030; the second, by 0.0152.
16 CF. Zeldin, pp. 15–16.
* from 5% to 19%.
17 There are many eloquent testimonials to this fact occurring throughout the era. The year end reports of the Faculty, the Memória Históricas, are replete with appeals every year complaining of poor facilities, lack of adequate funds in all areas and general neglect by the government. The correspondence of the directors of the Faculty echo these problems also; see, de Direito do Recife, Faculdade, Documentos de sua História, (manuscript), 3 vols. (1875–1890)Google Scholar, especially vol. III (1886–1890). Much of the correspondence from the law school administration to the central government suggests that the law school faced serious financial pressure in the closing years of the Empire and received little or no help from a badly disorganized Ministry of the Empire.
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* The Law School moved to Recife in 1854.
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22 See Table III for total number of graduates from the Recife Law School.
23 interview with José Soriano de Souza Neto, July 21, 1974.
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