ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT, LAW AND INEQUALITY: how to justify the brasilian performance

Abstract

An important part of the contemporary economic debate involves attempts to justify the maintenance of underdevelopment, especially the economic one, of certain nations, more specifically of globalized Brazil, given the easier access to information and technology. The hypothesis worked on in this research is that economic underdevelopment - as well as the democratic, social and cultural ones - is the result of Brazilian colonization, based on the extraction of goods and enslavement of natives, generating a culture of extractive economic institutions and a non-pluralistic political system. We sought to move away from the justification for economic development based on geographic, cultural, and intellectual criteria or “ignorance”, bringing the analysis closer to the understanding that it is the adoption of inclusive economic institutions, in close relationship with pluralism, including political pluralism, path to the desired development.