REGIONAL CLEAVAGES AND POLITICAL PARTICIPATION IN BRAZIL

 CHAPTER 2
PATRIMONIALISM AND REGIONALIZATION: A THEORETICAL APPROACH


If one wants to go deeper into the study of a given political system, it is obvious that one should move from the analysis of the overall political system into the study of regional differences and subsystems; and the larger the population and geographical area covered by the national system, the more important this analysis becomes. In other words, the closer and deeper we look into something we are trying to understand, the better. In this chapter, however, the idea goes much further than that. The proposition is that the analysis of regional subsystems, when properly performed, implies a profound shift of theoretical perspectives, in such a way that the kind of knowledge which is acquired is not simply "better" than before, but qualitatively more adequate. The gain is not simply a matter of added knowledge, but a new way of understanding.

This notion of a new theoretical approach stemming from an analysis of regional differentiation has already been indicated in the introduction, in reference to the role of the state of São Paulo in the Brazilian national system(1). It was suggested that São Paulo should neither be considered a "deviant" case in the national picture, nor a representative of a "more advanced" stage of development in the country. Two facts suffice to illustrate this point. One is the weakness of the national political parties in the state of São Paulo during the 1945-1964 period; this reflects the relative marginality of the country's economic center as regards the national party system(2). The other is the relative equilibrium between the processes of urbanization and industrialization, which the state underwent during this century. This differs markedly from the process of urbanization without industrialization which occurred in other metropolitan areas of the country. To consider São Paulo a "deviant" case would mean explaining away the historical role of the country's most important area in terms of its economy and population: this is obviously not admissible. And there are no reasons to believe that the present metropolitan areas of the country, such as Rio, Belo Horizonte, Recife and others, will eventually replicate the Paulista pattern of intensive industrialization, leading a process of urban concentration.

Nor is São Paulo the only deviant case. The state of Rio Grande do Sul, bordering Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay, has historically played in the national system a political role quite out of proportion to its size and economic weight(3). Rio Grande do Sul is not a region of traditional politics, based on local bonds and loyalties in a stagnant economy. It has never been a dominant economic pole, or the administrative center of the country; on the contrary, it is a frontier state, thousands of miles away from the country's capital. But this geographical marginality seems to have placed the state in the very center of national politics since at least the end of the nineteenth century. The special role of Rio de Janeiro, as the seat of the national government, is probably easier to understand; the same applies to the state of Minas Gerais, which is closer to what "traditional" politics is supposed to be, in historical terms.

We have, in short, at least four main regional actors in the political system, which behave in quite different ways, and have important but sometimes unexpected impact on the national system: the economic center (São Paulo), the urban and administrative center (Rio de Janeiro), the traditional countryside (Minas Gerais) and the frontier state (Rio Grande do Sul). To describe the theoretical framework of their interaction is the objective of this chapter(4).

1. State and society

Stein Rokkan has presented us with a highly sophisticated and complex framework for the study of nation building and the development of political and party cleavages in Western Europe(5). It would probably be unwise to apply his whole analytical framework directly to the study of the Brazilian political system; but it is essential to bear it in mind as we try to unfold the variables which characterize Brazil's regional differences and national integration process in a more inductive and, as it were, "natural" way.

The point of departure is the classic distinction between state and society. It is well known today that there are substantial differences between the meaning of the word "state" in the Anglo Saxon and in other intellectual traditions; these differences reflect real historical differences, and explain the relative "statelessness" of Anglo-Saxon political theory. J P. Nettl has argued in favor of using the "variable degree of stateness" as a central variable in cross national studies(6); Reinhardt Bendix, in an earlier paper, made a similar suggestion(7).

The essential idea is that the State is not only a concept referring to the integration and sovereignty of a given population in a given territory - in which case the notion of different levels or "degrees of stateness" would be meaningless - but is also a specific institution within a country which not only performs the functions of boundary maintenance and sovereignty, but can also be smaller or bigger, stronger or weaker, independent of or controlled by other social groups and institutions. In other words, there is here a shift from a functional to a more structural perspective, that is, the State is considered as an institution endowed with a changing structure of its own.

Both Bendix and Nettl place these different conceptions of the State in historical and theoretical perspectives. Bendix emphasizes the existence of two main approaches in political theory since Machiavelli. The first and older of these approaches is Machiavelli's own: he thinks of political facts and events as functions of the abilities and virtues of the political leader, the Prince. Generally speaking, this tradition leads to a perception of the State as a unit which organizes the will and aspirations of the society as a whole, defining and working towards society's goals. The ruler is not responsive to the ruled, whereas the social structure seems to offer no resistance to the Prince: the only limitations to his will are his own fancy and wit. This, of course, is an extreme conception, which has the absolutist state as its implicit empirical reference.

The other theoretical tradition stems from Rousseau: the power of the State is a delegation of "the people" and the government must act in accordance with an explicit and well- limited social contract. The idea of a social contract has a meaning which is ideological and normative, since it appeared in the struggle against absolutism: but it also has sociological value in that it is an empirical statement on how politics is performed, when social groups are strong and the government is weak. The contractualist notion of the State was equivalent to a Copernican revolution in political thought, leading to a shift in perspective which led, quite often, to the very obliteration of the State as an autonomous variable worthy of the political analyst's attention. As a matter of fact, in this extreme view, the State is nothing but the locus through which the dominant groups or classes exercise their will: it has no political texture of its own.

As seen through the criticism which Marx addresses to his Philosophy of Law(8), it is Hegel who opens the way for the analysis of the relationships between the State and civil society as separate and often contradictory structures. Hegel distinguishes between civil society, which is the state of necessity, and the State, which represents the general will, the unity of political life. More specifically, civil society is for Hegel the Phenomenon of the State, while the State is the Idea of society. The Idea is incorporated in the Sovereign and the Constitution, and the mediation between the Idea and society is performed by several intervening institutions, such as public opinion, civilian group representation in the State, the bureaucracy, and so on.(9)

One of the main points of Marx's criticism is the stress he places on the private character of bureaucracy. For Hegel, bureaucracy is the soul of the State, and the private activities of civil servants perform a universal function. In Marx's opinion, however, the bureaucrat ends up making this universal function his private business. For Hegel, bureaucracy has, as its first assumption, the autonomy and organization of civil society in private corporations. The choice of civil servants and public authorities is conceived as a mixed choice, initiated in the private sector and approved by the Sovereign. The fact is, says Marx, that this kind of penetration by civil society into the State leads to nothing but the creation of another kind of private corporation, the bureaucracy:
The corporations are the materialism of the bureaucracy, and the bureaucracy is the spiritualism of the corporations; but the corporation is the bureaucracy of civil society, and the bureaucracy is the corporation of the State.
And, later on:
The bureaucracy keeps in its power the being of the State, the spiritual being of society: it is its private property. The general spirit of the bureaucracy is its mystery; this mystery is kept inside the bureaucracy by its hierarchy, and kept from the outside because the bureaucracy has the characteristics of a private corporation. To make the spirit of the State known to everybody is thus perceived by the bureaucracy as a treason to its mystery. The principle of bureaucratic science is thus authority and the idolatry of authority its sentiment. Kept within the bureaucracy, this spiritualism becomes a sordid materialism, the materialism of passive obeisance, of faith in authority, of the mechanicism of fixed formal activities, of fixed principles, ideas and traditions. For the bureaucrat taken as an individual, the goals of the State become his private goal, which is the hunting for higher positions, the push on the way up. (10)
This notion of a bureaucracy with private interests includes, of course, the conception of the State as the political arm of a given social class, but it is more general than that. Nettl discusses this in some length, and shows how "Marx partially lost interest in the problem of the state when he moved intellectually as well as physically from Europe to England and when, in writing Das Kapital, he concentrated on the much more "English" analysis of economic forces and consequent class relations rather than on the problems of ideological consciousness and revolution in a state dominated Europe."(11)

Bendix shows how Machiavelli himself recognized the existence of two types of government, one carried on by "the Prince and his servants" and the other by "the Prince and his Barons".(12) While, in the first type, the Prince is the only source of power, in the latter there are rights of political influence which are obtained through heritage and do not depend on the Prince's favor. This second type of political power characterizes a state of equilibrium between the central power and what would later be called "civil society"; each has some autonomy of decisions and initiative, and tries to limit and direct the behavior of the other. The fact that the "Barons" are just a tiny group of aristocrats is less important, theoretically, than the notion that their sources of power do not come from the Prince.

Once this duality of power sources is established, it expands and differentiates in several directions. What is important is the idea that this is not simply a matter of functional differentiation, in which the State performs the political functions of vertical authority and domination, while "the Barons" retain the horizontal functions of solidarity, interest aggregation, and articulation. What happens, in fact, is that aggregation and articulation of private interests are carried on within the structures of authority, while systems of authority develop within the "private" sector of society and reach towards the control of the state. The actual balance between these two tendencies varies, and has to be determined empirically. The more significant theoretical point here is that the characteristics of a given state' s structure cannot be fully deduced from the characteristics of its "civil society" (or, in contemporary terms, its class structure), just as society cannot be fully understood from the formal characteristics of its governmental organization.

2. Patrimonialism and the growth of the state

In the contractual model, the government does not have power of its own: civil society delegates it power and provides it with resources. In fact, as demonstrated in Marx's criticism of Hegel's Theory of Law, the organization which performs this delegation develops private resources and private interests. This occurs when the State acts by delegation of the "whole society," as well as when it behaves more or less clearly as "the instrument" of a given class. One of the reasons for this is, of course, the sheer growth and differentiation of the government. From the theoretical role of a simple gendarme and mediator, the "stateless" state of the nineteenth century, referred to by Nettl, develops into a giant which makes the simple interest group approach to political analysis little more than a historical relic. E. E. Schattschneider stressed this point very strongly:
While we were looking the other way, the government of the United States became a global operation a decade or two ago. The budget is about 250 times as large as it was seventy years ago (...) In a purely formal sense we can say that the government of the United States is the same one that was established in 1789 - in about the same way in which Henry Ford's bicycle repair shop is the same as the Ford Motor Company today.(13)
What is most remarkable about the American system is not so much this development in itself, as the fact that it did not lead to a more thorough annihilation of independent power sources. American liberalism, according to one of its critics, Theodore J. Lowi, means just the opposite, since it leads to the privatization of the public sector.

Referring to the agricultural sector, for instance, Lowi sees it as an extreme case of "private expropriation of public authority." "This is the feudal pattern," he continues, "fusion of all statuses and functions and governing through rigid but personalized fealties. In modern dress, that was the corporatist way."(14) The difference between this neo-corporativism of the Liberal State and the Corporative State as such is that, in the latter, the State behaves explicitly and legitimately on behalf of a group which has control over the state apparatus as the basis, rather than as an instrument, of its social, economic, and political power.

The idea of economic power based on the State, and not the opposite (that is, political power based on economic resources) is difficult to accept in "stateless" political theories, and this helps to explain the odyssey of the "Asian mode of production" in Marxian literature.(15) As it appears in the relatively recently rediscovered Grundrisse,(16) this concept applies to some pre-capitalist forms of economic organization, which are characterized by the partial or total existence of private property, or at least by the existence of a predominant public sector in the economy:
Étant le véritable propriétaire et la véritable condition de la propriété collective, l'unité peut elle-même sembler distincte et au-dessus de la multitude des communautés particulières: l'individu est alors, en fait, sans propriété.(17)
Marx distinguishes two subtypes of these pre capitalist forms: one generally based on the large-scale organization of rural economies, usually through nationally integrated systems of water irrigation works, and another based instead on urban centers, where
la guerre est donc la grand tache collective, le grand travail commun, exigés soit pour s'emparer des conditions matérielles d'existence, soit pour défendre et perpétuer l'occupation.(18)
There is no need to go further into the expanding debate which still revolves around the concept of "Asiatism." It is enough to keep in mind that this type of economic and political organization does not fit the evolutionary model which goes from slavery to serfdom to wage labor and capitalism, a model in which the interest group politics concept belongs, and which is more or less implicit in the "stateless" theories of social development.(19) It is a fact that the Western states which attained high levels of development during this century have more or less followed that pattern, and there is a high correlation between a decentralized and feudal-like system in the past and high economic development in this century. "Hydraulic societies," bureaucratic and centralized empires of the past were way ahead of medieval Europe, according to almost any standards of development, but they did not seem to have been able to adapt themselves to modern industrial society; whereas countries with a feudal past (the only one in Asia which comes close to it being Japan) were much more able to adopt modern and efficient forms of economic organization. Thus - and contrary to what is sometimes held- feudalism does not seem to have been a factor of underdevelopment; on the contrary, it was its absence, and the dominance of a bureaucratized and overgrown state, which seem to have been the determinants of underdevelopment. Having arrived late in a world developed through capitalist initiative, these underdeveloped countries have only their own inflated states to bring them into the world of industrial development.(20)

3. Cleavages in patrimonial states

The concept of "patrimonialism" acquires its full characterization in Mx Weber, who refers to a type of traditional domination where the government "is an extension of the ruler's household." It is essential to recall that this concept is used as an alternative to another major type of traditional domination, feudalism.(21) There are a few characteristics of patrimonialism which lead more or less directly to the political cleavages which are bound to appear in states with this type of domination.

First, patrimonial states tend to be urban based, and to develop urban civilizations. These urban centers can be either the capital of an empire, or a city state with trade and military interests abroad. These centers tend to have a sizable floating population, and an aristocracy which has to be fitted somehow into the governmental bureaucracy. The first political problem of patrimonial states is keeping the urban masses content, and keeping the government jobs open to the urban aristocracy.

Second, there is the classic tension between the ruler and his officers: "All patrimonial states of the past have involved a pattern of decentralization that has been determined by the struggle for power between the ruler and his retainers and officers."(22) As the patrimonial realm grows, so grows the need to delegate power and authority, and at the same time the feasibility of central control is reduced. Moreover, retainers of patrimonial delegation tend to receive their posts as political prebends, and to use them as their private property. When the patrimonial state is based on military conquest and occupation, this pattern leads to the development of private, or praetorian military bodies, which have more loyalty to their own captains than to the ruler. When the patrimonial state is based on agriculture, regional atomization occurs and semi-autonomous satraps emerge.

The third type involves a pattern of continuous belligerency between the patrimonial state and other states at its borders. It is reasonable to suppose, in fact, that military occupation and direct exploitation are simply extreme cases of patrimonial military expansion. The history of the old empires, including the Roman Empire, shows a clear pattern of expansion which includes, first, military occupation, looting and enslavement of part of the local population; afterwards, the establishment of some kind of federation between conqueror and conquered, very often maintaining the local ruling class in its positions. The rationale for this arrangement is obvious, since the maintenance of the local economic and political structure assures a continuous flow of revenue towards the patrimonial state, through levies and taxes of all kinds, which cannot be kept flowing in predatory conquests. The maintenance of this kind of local autonomy means that some power remains outside the state, and that tensions and conflicts are bound to arise.

A not altogether different situation occurs when some forms of autonomous activity emerges within the patrimonial dominion, with or without the ruler's consent and intention. One pattern here is the emergence of some industry or agriculture for the foreign market, which is heavily taxed by the state. The state stimulates this activity, but at the same time functions as a parasite, which limits and eventually kills autonomous activity. In the "hydraulic" type of society, the situation is different: here the government plays a direct and active role in the organization and administration of the economy. In the pattern above, however, all the initiative comes from the private sphere, and the role of the state is almost purely fiscal. In absolutist Europe, this process was evidenced in the emergence of strong trade and industrial centers, which paralleled the progressive decay of feudal power. Eventually, it led to the emergence of bourgeois aspirations and values, which brought about the destruction of the patrimonial state. Actually, in his analysis of Weber's theories on the emergence of legal rationality, Bendix shows that "in Western Europe patrimonial power eventually promoted the formal rationality of law and administration, and this conflicts with the tendency of patrimonial rulers to promote substantive justice and personal favoritism." This process is explained by Weber, among other things, as a consequence of the central government's need to restrain the power pretensions of vassals and office-holders. This was done through the establishment of a "centrally controlled officialdom," and "in the struggle against the entrenched position of the states, patrimonial rulers were frequently supported by the rising bourgeoisie."(23)

It is clear from the foregoing discussion that patrimonialism of the Western European kind, as it existed in absolutist regimes, was very different from other versions. The main difference consists in the fact that Western European patrimonialism was strengthened together with the emergence of the bourgeoisie; at the end of the process, the system of legal domination, which succeeded the absolutist regimes, was mostly contractual and most suited to modern capitalism. It would certainly be possible to trace the differences between the "state" and "stateless" societies, suggested by Nettl, back to the varying balance between bourgeois and patrimonial powers in the struggle against the remains of the feudal, corporatist society. It is remarkable that Weber himself does not seem to have elaborated on the structural conditions which could have explained the differences between the Anglo-Saxon and the continental European systems of legal rationality and authority. These differences are minimal, nevertheless, when compared to the systems of those states which evolved from an original patrimonial system to a modern centralized state, without the mediation of a "bourgeois" revolution. These states are certainly capable to modernizing and rationalizing their bureaucracies, but their power bases and political systems must necessarily be quite different from those of Western democracies. And these make up, of course, the bulk of today's non-western countries.

4. A fourfold regionalization

The previous discussion presents a theoretical framework for the interpretation of the four types of Brazilian regions, suggested at the beginning. The gap between the theoretical discussion and the Brazilian case can now be filled by showing how the Brazilian system of regions belongs to a more general type, a species related to the historical presence of a patrimonial state.

That Portugal did not fit the classic European type of feudal organization is a fact which seems to be agreed upon by most historians:
[Portuguese] nobility, according to Antonio de Souza, never plunged its roots into the countryside, nor had it ever had a civilizing, directive and protective role for the local population; it was rather a parasite living off the population and the central power. (24)
Power was concentrated in the House of Avid, and this helps to explain the remarkable entrepreneurial push which fifteenth and sixteenth century Portugal showed. The centralized, bureaucratic and patrimonial structure of the government was transplanted in Brazil, first with the establishment of the General Government in 1548 and, much later, with the migration of the whole Portuguese court to Rio in 1808.(25) Since Brazil's independence was declared in 1822 by a member of the Portuguese royalty, the line of continuity was never completely broken; this is important for an understanding of the stable institutionalization of the Brazilian government, during the colonial period and later) during the second half of the nineteenth century. It is worth noting that, prior to the establishment of the General Government in 1548, a system of feudal like captaincies was promoted, without success. These captaincies were transmitted from father to son, and the Portuguese Crown had to buy one of them back when the General Government was created.(26) The system of captaincies did not work out, the historians say, but two of them enjoyed some success. One was Pernambuco, where the sugar culture flourished as the colony's main product during the sixteenth and seventeenth century. The other was São Vicente, later known as the Province and State of São Paulo.

This brief overview sketches three of our main region-types. One of these is the government capital, Rio de Janeiro. This is the country's most modern area: it has more direct contact with European life, and its culture and consumption are more conspicuous. It has also tended to be an area of marginal population and underemployment. According to the 1890 Census of Rio de Janeiro, for instance, about 50 per cent of its employees were in "domestic services" or had "undeclared" professions. Race was obviously related to this, since slavery had been abolished only two years earlier. But the differences are not that great: 76 per cent of the blacks and 53 per cent of the mulattos were in this group, but also 43 per cent of the whites, which represented 62.5 per cent of the whole "employed" population.(27). This mass of marginal population was certainly a nuisance to the elite, which had to reckon with them occasionally when they became restless. (28). Usually, however, Rio presented a picture of popular politics and mass participation which had little to do with how things were really decided. In this sense, it did not differ much from the other administrative capitals of non industrial societies. Its economic resources were derived from trade and governmental employment, and its political life was characterized by some degree of tension between the urban bureaucrats and tradesmen, on the one hand, and a dependent regional gentry on the other, with occasional mobilization of the populace. Election turnout never went above 5 per cent of the total population before 1930: this gives us the overall pattern of political participation.

Nineteenth and early twentieth century Rio de Janeiro could be broadly described as a "pre industrial city." This concept was used by Gideon Sjoberg to characterize those urban structures which, according to him, had developed in feudal societies, where industrial development had not yet begun. In a footnote, Sjoberg tries to reduce the difference between European and non European pre industrial towns:
Henri Pirenne, in Medieval Cities, and others have noted that European cities grew up in opposition to and were separate from the greater society. But this thesis has been overstated for Medieval Europe. Most industrial cities are integral parts of broader social structures.(29)
The main difficulty with the notion of pre-industrial city is, of course, the theory of unilinear development which it implies, and which considers the feudal system the sole predecessor of modern societies. This point is taken up in a rebuttal to Sjoberg's book written by Oliver C. Cox(30), who states that even in medieval Europe the cities developed outside the feudal structure; he considers Sjoberg' s notion of pre-industrial city little more than a residual concept.

Cox's criticism of Sjoberg's argument is convincing, but has little to offer in return. The best theoretical clue, not surprisingly, can be found in Max Weber's distinction between occidental and oriental cities.(31) For him, "the residence of the ruler or of any administrative body being the focal point for the whole country or region is the most important feature in the structure and functioning of oriental cities." In contrast, occidental cities are endowed with "corporate autonomy and autocephaly."(32) The theoretical consequences of these differences are innumerable, and have to do with differences in social stratification, the role of the army, the existence of autonomous economic activities, education, and so on. These differences are not, of course, a matter of geography, but have to do with the differences between the patrimonial and the feudal variants of traditional domination. City politics in Rio de Janeiro was most certainly "local," in the sense that its bearing on national events was minimal; but the same cannot be said of the politics of its elite, which was eminently national.

The second region is the so-called "traditional" reverse of the bureaucratic and urban capital. Brazilian "traditional" regions have little in common with what appears as "traditionalism" in the standard literature on underdevelopment and modernization. This literature usually considers as "traditional" those peasant or otherwise non industrial societies which suffer the impact of modernization and industrialization.(33) These traditional societies are, supposedly, in a primitive stage of social and economic development, and the corresponding sociological literature deals with the cultural, emotional and social obstacles to modern values, life-styles and patterns of behavior.(34)

In Brazil, as in some other countries, "traditional" areas are not areas which have not modernized, but, on the contrary, tend to be those which have had a period of progress in the past, and then suffered a process of economic decay. The old sugar culture area of the Northeast and the former mining areas of Minas Gerais are probably the best examples of Brazilian traditionalism: both have a past of wealth and national economic pre-eminence. One of the most obscure, but more interesting questions about Brazilian economic and political history is what happens with these areas when they lose their export capabilities and recede into the shadow of history.(35) In the case of Minas Gerais, the exhaustion of the mining activities by the second half of the eighteenth century left the province with the largest population in the country, mostly centered in urban settlements, and with no major economic activity of high profitability The other thing that remained was, most probably, the bureaucratic structure of the Portuguese administration, and this was certainly the means through which the political vocation of the Minas Gerais elite was born.

V. 0. Key's Southern Politics is probably the best description of a political system which survives a process of political decay - in this case, the period after the South's defeat in the Civil War (the eleven states studied by Key are also those of the Southern Confederacy). He shows that these states have at least one common trait with the Brazilian states of the Old Republic, namely the one party system. Key's analysis of the behavior of Southern senators suggests a very consistent pattern: they unite whenever the state's autonomy is at stake, whenever the racial status quo is threatened, and whenever the national Democratic government needs their support. The arrangement is fairly clear: the Southern Democrats support the government in exchange for control in their own states. In spite of these well defined patterns, Southern politics is usually "issueless," since even the racial question tends not to be raised. One party systems, oligarchic control of the state political machinery, little popular participation, large rural properties in a decaying economy - all these similarities with traditional Minas Gerais are not purely coincidental. The main difference, of course, is that whereas the Confederate states had been defeated by the industrialized North, in Brazil, the political hegemony of the industrial center was never the case(36).

The smallest unit in traditional politics of this kind is the local community in the countryside, where the local chieftain (in Brazil, the coronel ) exerts his power. A sizable portion of Brazilian political literature has been devoted to examining the patterns of political traditionalism at the grassroots.(37) The most successful theoretical attempts are those that interpret local and regional political preeminence as a function of the brokerage roles played by the political leaders in local, state, and national governments.(38) It is important to note that this interpretation does not imply that control of the land, family ties, loyalties, and personal allegiances had no role in politics. All of these "traditional" elements were certainly present in different degrees, but they worked within a context of economic decay and a predominant bureaucratic government at the state and national level.

The third region, São Paulo, displays most important differences. Since the very beginning of the country's history, the former Captaincy of São Vicente developed independently of the central administration. São Vicente was the first settlement which moved from the coast to the hinterland, in open contradiction to the general settlement policy of the Portuguese Crown.(39) The history of the expansion of São Vicente includes Indian hunting expeditions, which penetrated further and further South, resulting in a military clash with Spanish Jesuit missions; expeditions in search of gold and gems, which ended in a clash with other immigrants from Rio and the North in the mining areas, during the Emboabas war;(40) and a conspicuous absence of the Province of São Paulo from the forefront of national events, until the explosion of coffee plantations in the nineteenth century.

This is not the place for a history of the spectacular development of São Paulo from the late nineteenth century onwards, nor for a discussion of its political role within the national picture. It is enough to recall that, after the 1940 census, it was the largest Brazilian state in terms of population, and had for a long time been the main source of taxes for the central government and the center of the country's industrialization. Politically, São Paulo has been less important than its size and economic weight would suggest; and, in 1932, it was the last Brazilian state to rise in arms against the central government.(41)

This pattern of relationships between administrative and economic centers is not a Brazilian peculiarity; it is a more general phenomenon shared by those countries which experienced some industrial development in the setting of a strong patrimonial-like state.

Juan Linz finds in Spain the same "paradox" that we find in Brazil:
Paradoxically, in the recent history of Spain, the most developed regions have felt alienated from the nation state. Having "economic power" and well-being, they felt, rightly or wrongly, deprived of "political power."(42)
The differences between Madrid and Barcelona, as expressed in the table below, are strikingly similar to those we might find between Rio and São Paulo:

TABLE 1
SPAIN: BARCELONA AND MADRID
  "Bourgeois" Spain (Barcelona) Madrid
Population (1960) 24.20% 7.67%
Per capita income (national average = 100) 16.4 131
Recruitment of Cabinet members in Franco regimea .85 6.25
Judges (1958)a .58 3.24
University professorsa .95 2.87
aRatio of the proportion born in each "Spain" and the proportion of the population living there in 1910 (taken as a date close to the birth year of the elites). Source: Juan Linz, "The Eight Spains," in Rokkan and Merrit, Comparing Nations (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press) 1966.

TABLE 2
BRAZIL: REGIONAL DIFFERENCES IN FOUR STATES
  % Population (1970) % Income
  urban total from industry from agriculture from the public sector total
São Paulo 27.3 19.0 56.8 19.5 23.5 35.3
Minas Gerais 11.7 12.3 7.5 12.2 8.3 10.0
Rio de Janeiro (Guanabara) 8.2 4.6 9.7 0.6 25.2 11.4
Rio Grande do Sul 6.8 7.1 5.9 12.6 8.9 8.5
Sum of Four States 54.0 43.0 79.9 44.9 65.9 65.2
Brazil 100.% 100.% 100.% 100.% 100.% 100.%
Source: Fundação IBGE, Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística, Anuário Estatístico do Brasil, 1971.

Italy seems to be another case in point, with differences among the industrial Northern area, the urban and administrative Center, and the rural South, as can be seen in the table below:

TABLE 3
ITALY: RESIDENT FAMILIES BY BRANCH OF ECONOMIC ACTIVITY OF THE HEAD OF THE FAMILY AND BY REGIONS (%).
Regions: Population Number of families with had of family working in
Industry Agriculture other activities
Settentrionale 44.8 56.4 35.5 47.1
Meridionale 18.5 17.5 16.0 22.4
Insulare 12.2 8.0 16.7 10.3
Total 100% 100% 100% 100%
Source: Calculated from Instituto Centrale de Statistica, Compendio Statistico Italiano (Roma), 1971, pps 21, 28-29.

A. F. Organski is aware of the regional discontinuities in Italy, and links the emergence of Fascism with them:
Some regions modernize faster and further than others because of advantages in resources, available skills, communications with the outside world, or other reasons. Some nations modernize politically and remain backward economically. Other nations are highly urban before they are economically developed or politically modern... In the degree of symmetry and the degree of continuity in the changes of these three sets of variables (social, economic and political modernization) lies a very large portion - certainly a major portion - of the explanation for the appearance of fascist systems, the duration of their tenure, the variation in fascist political attitudes and behavior, and the manner and timing of the termination of the system.(43)
The assumption of unequal, but nevertheless unilinear development is probably the main weakness of this notion. Indeed, if "no nation develops in such a fashion that all regions and all aspects of national life keep in step with all the rest," it remains to be explained why only a few of these nations fall into the fascist pattern of political organization. The fact is that the differences are not just a matter of varying regional and functional rates of growth, but mostly a question of regional structural differentiation, which the imbalances of development reflect.

The fourth region is Rio Grande do Sul, the southernmost state in the country. Its history starts with the establishment of the Portuguese Colony of Sacramento at the border of the Rio de la Plata, followed almost immediately by an attack from the Spanish governor of Buenos Aires. During most of the eighteenth century, the region is the main point of friction between the Portuguese and the Spanish empires in America. After Brazil's Independence, the military nature of the province remains because of the conflicts between Brazil and Argentina concerning the control of what is today Uruguay, as well as because of the separatist revolutionary movements in Rio Grande, which always involved dealings with Argentine and Uruguayan rulers and caudillos.(44)

Stein Rokkan has captured an important aspect of European nation building which, to some extent, parallels the process undergone by Rio Grande. He shows essentially two types of city-states developing in Europe: "The Swiss and Dutch confederations were essentially defensive in character: there was no strong conquest centre..., but a network of strategically placed cities willing to poll their resources in defense of their trading privileges.(45) To these typical "occidental" cities, he opposes another type, developed "at the edges" of the Old Roman Empire. "Paradoxically," he says, "the history of Europe is one of the centre formation at the periphery," and, more specifically:
These power centers at the southeastern and northeastern corners of the territories of the Roman Church built up crusading frontier empires against the rival world region of the South. This helps to explain the very close symbiosis of Church and State in these empires: the military might of the State was a decisive instrument in the struggle for the expansion of Western Christendom... The Iberian empires brought the same fervor of orthodoxy across the ocean to the New World: the conquest of Latin America produced an even stronger fusion of religious, political and economic institutions.(46)
As in a system of Chinese boxes, Rio Grande seems to have played in Brazil the same role that Portugal and Spain did in Christian Europe: as a frontier military outpost, it developed its own orthodoxy, Positivism - a peculiar combination of military tradition and cattle raising culture - and a strong state oligarchy, which gathered strength for the fights against the Spanish and "portico" enemies in defense of the autonomy of the Brazilian Empire. The region was (and still is) the basis for the most important wing of the Brazilian Army and has historically furnished a sizable part of the army's cadres. It played a very active role in national politics since at least the creation of the Partido Republicano Riograndense in 1882, during the fall of the Empire in 1889, and thereafter. It came to national power in 1930 with Vargas, who was formerly the Governor of Rio Grande in behalf of the state boss Borges de Medeiros; with Vargas the "gaúchos" literally hitched their horses to the national capital.(47) Vargas came to power again in 1950, Goulart in 1961, Costa e Silva and Médici after 1964; all these "gaúcho" presidents testify to Rio Grande's remarkable vocation for national power, either through its civilian or its military sons.

This brief outline is too short to account for other important aspects of Rio Grande's role in Brazilian history. It would be important to take into account the state' s internal cleavages, and its special economic role as a supplier of goods to the national market, as well as the importance which early European immigration to the state had on the development of a highly productive agricultural system.(48) But the fact seems to remain that Rio Grande's political role at the national level has much more to do with its military, caudillo, revolutionary and oligarchic tradition than with the modern and European-like aspects of its economy and society.

5. Conclusion

Granting that the fourfold regionalization suggested here is relevant to the study of Brazilian political history, one might still wonder about its usefulness in the analysis of future outcomes in Brazilian politics.

The Brazilian political picture suffered a drastic change after 1945, with the granting of political suffrage to the entire adult literate population. The system of mass politics, which emerged after 1945, was superimposed on the regional cleavages, creating a rather complex pattern which I analyze elsewhere.(49) To the cleavage between the patrimonial and the capitalist areas of national politics, and the cleavages among center, periphery and frontier in the patrimonial state, another, involving issues of popular participation, was added. Basically, two dominant types of political participation emerged: one, along the Minas - Rio axis; the other, in the industrial areas of the country. The first was what can be called a "co-optation system," which is defined as a system of political participation in which governmental positions are sought, not so much as resources for implementing sectoral interests, but as a means of social mobility in themselves. The second, on the other hand, was closer to the classic concept of interest- group politics. There are rural and urban, as well as capitalist and working-class cleavages in each of these systems, making the simple number of possible combinations quite high. I believe that the regional context of the emergence of mass politics in Brazil is an essential clue to the understanding of this experience of representative democracy, if one intends to go deeper than the simple concepts of modernization, mobilization, mastication or radicalization would allow.

Furthermore, the correct understanding of the 1945-64 system is indispensable if predictions about the political future of the country are to be made. It is clear, for instance, that this discussion shows the naiveté of expecting a new party system to emerge in Brazil, in terms of interest group representation. The present restrictions on political activity in the country cannot be taken as a simple consequence of the ideological preferences of the government: rather, they should be seen as the development of a historical tradition of governmental centralization and weak autonomous organizations. This means that, if the restrictions on political participation and mobilization were to be lifted, any workable political arrangement would have to be based on newly created forms of political organization, more in accordance with the realities of the country, and less as a function of the old-fashioned interest- group imagery. Once the search for these new forms begins, a correct view of the history of political cleavages in the country will be indispensable.

Notes

1. For São Paulo's role in the Brazilian political and economic systems, especially before 1945, see Warren Dean (1969), and chapter IV and V, below.

2. See chapter vi, below

3. For the role of Rio Grande do Sul in Brazilian regional politics, see Joseph L. Love (1971). For a scholarly account of the social and political fabric of Rio Grande do Sul in the nineteenth century, see Fernando H. Cardoso (1962).

4. It is important to note that I am leaving two important states, Bahia and Pernambuco, out of the picture: these states were national, political and economic centers in the colonial period, but have suffered a marked process of political "atimie." I am assuming that they fall into the traditional pattern typified by Minas Gerais, but this is certainly a simplification which should be accepted only with caution.

5. Stein Rokkan (forthcoming), and (1967). Charles Tilly has suggested an extremely interesting framework for the analysis of Western European nation building which is within the same perspective. Cf. Charles Tilly (forthcoming).

6. J. P. Nettl (1968). The relative "statelessness" of American social science coincides with the relative statelessness of the United States, with the long period during which the egalitarian and pluralistic society predicted with sensitive fingertips by Tocqueville was becoming institutionalized over a vast continent. One has only to read Lipset or Mitchell to see that an American socio-political self-examination simply leaves no room for any valid notion of state.

7. Reinhard Bendix (1966).

8. Cf. G. W. Hegel (1940), especially after page 255.

9. I am here following the discussion of Jean Hippolyte (1965) which refers to the classic work of G. Luckacz on the young Hegel.

10. This is a free translation of the French version of Karl Marx (1937)

11. Nettl (1968), p. 572. The main reference here is Eugene Kamenka (1962).

12. N. Machiavelli (1940), p. 15, quoted by R. Bendix (1960), p. 360.

13. E. E. Schattschneider (1960), pp. 116-117.

14. Theodore J. Lowi (1969), p. 102.

15. For a lengthy discussion of the concept and its history and fate in the Marxist literature, cf. Karl A. Wittfogel (1957), chapter IX.

16. First published in Russia in 1939. Translated into French by Roger Dangeville. The reference is from Karl Marx (1967), Vol. I, p. 437.

17. Marx (1967), p. 439.

18. Marx (1967), p. 439.

19. This model is explicit in Engel's The Origin of Family, Private Property and the State. See its discussion in K. Wittfogel (1957), p. 382 and ff.

20. The classical reference for the role of the State in the development of latecomers to the industrial world is, of course, Alexander Gerschenkron (1962). See chapter VII, below, for a broader discussion.

21. R. Bendix (1960), p. 360.

22. R. Bendix (1960), p. 348.

23. R. Bendix (1960), pp. 405-406.

24. S. Buarque de Holanda (1960), p. 18 (my translation).

25. The main source for the analysis of Portuguese patrimonialism in Brazil is Raymundo Faoro (1958). For an overview of Spanish patrimonialism, see Magali Sarfatti (1966).

26. E. Bradford Burns (1970), p. 24: "Those inalienable land grants transmitted by inheritance to the oldest son brought to the New World some of the residues of feudalism long on the wane in the Iberian peninsula."

27. Data recalculated from Herbert S. Klein (1969), p. 50. The original source is the Diretoria Geral de Estatística (1895).

28. Rio has traditionally been the place for popular mobilization on political issues. One of the most well known examples is the abolitionist campaign in the late nineteenth century; another was the rebellion of the Rio population in 1904 against compulsory smallpox vaccination. Edgar Carone gives a good example both of public proximity and public impotence in political issues in a quotation from an eyewitness of the 1889 coup, which established the Republic:

"For the time being, the Government is purely military, and will remain this way. Theirs was the event, only theirs, because the cooperation of the civilian element was almost non-existent. The people followed all this stupefied, surprised, without knowing what it meant. Many believed that it was a military parade. It was something worth seeing. The enthusiasm came later . . . [From a letter of Aristides Lobo, a newsman, quoted in Edgar Carone (1969), p. 288. My translation]

29. Gideon Sjoberg (1960).

30. Oliver C. Cox (1964).

31. Max Weber (1958).

32. Vatro Murvaer (1966).

33. Classic references here are E. Banfield (1958), and Daniel Lerner (1958). Implicit in Banfield's work is the assumption that, as people become less backward, their frame of reference expands from "amoral familism" to "public regardiness" (the presence of "public-regardiness" in the North American upper strata was tested, quite unsuccessfully, in J. Q. Wilson and E. C. Banfield (1964).) Lerner's relevance in the sociology of development also should not be minimized. According to Bendix (1970), "the great merit of Lerner' s study consists in its candid use of Western modernization as a model of global applicability," p. 250.

34. For instance, Lucien Pye (1962).

35. This process of economic decay and the mechanisms of adjustment are the subject of Antonio Barros de Castro (1971). For an analysis of the economic mechanisms behind the growing inequalities between the Northeast and the Southwest of Brazil, see Nathaniel H. Leff (1972).

36. 3V. 0. Key (1949), especially chapter xvi, "Solidarity in the Senate."

37. For a review of this literature, see José Murilo de Carvalho (1968). Gláucio Soares, in a forthcoming book on the 1945-64 period, has shown in a typology of Brazilian grassroots politics that the traditional "colonel" type of local politics is just one kind of local power, more typical of Minas Gerais than of São Paulo. Cf. Gláucio A. D. Soares (1971).

38. The best theoretical interpretation of local politics in "traditional" Brazil is certainly Antonio Octávio Cintra (1971). See also chapter IV, below.

39. Sérgio Buarque de Holanda (1960), pp. 129-30: "But São Paulo's case where the colonos and their descendants - white or mestizo - preferred the interior to the coast is, in any case an exception. In the rest of Brazil, for a long time, the rule was to follow the classic settlement patterns of Portuguese colonizing activities which had been dictated by mercantile convenience and by the African and Asian experiences.

40. For a description of the Emboabas War against the Paulista explorers in Minas Gerais around 1700, see S. Buarque de Holanda (1960), pp. 297-369, and chapter III, below.

41. Actually, after 1932, Minas Gerais rebelled twice against the central government; once, through a "Manifesto dos Mineiros," against the Vargas dictatorship, and later with the government of Magalhães Pinto against João Goulart, in 1964. In both cases, the central government was soon to be overthrown by the army. The São Paulo governor, Adhemar de Barros, also threatened to set his state against Goulart in 1964. This attempt, however, was less consonant with the national civil-military movement, and his own political survival was not maintained. The differences in the patterns of success and failure are significant.

42. Juan Linz (1966), p. 278 ff. See the tables comparing Brazil and Spain, below. Juan Linz gives some "soft" data which cannot easily be reproduced for Brazil. Alfred Stepan, nevertheless, makes an explicit parallel between Madrid - Barcelona and Rio - São Paulo when referring to the recruitment of cadets for Brazilian military school. He shows that, in the 1964-66 period, São Paulo had 18.3 per cent of the Brazilian population but only 8.26 per cent of the Army cadets, giving a ratio of about 5 to 10. The ratio for Rio de Janeiro was about 90 to 10, and for Rio Grande do Sul, 19 to 10. The ratio for Rio Grande in an earlier period is much higher. Alfred Stepan (1971), p. 38.

43. A. F. Organski (1969).

44. The best study on Rio Grande do Sul's political history in the twentieth century is certainly Joseph L. Love (1971). The Brazilian bibliography on the early period is quite extensive. For a detailed account of the conflicts with the Spanish colonies since the establishment of the Colônia de Sacramento, see Alcides Lima (1935). See chapter iv, below for a more extensive account.

45. Stein Rokkan (forthcoming), p. 21.

46. Stein Rokkan (forthcoming), pp. 23-24.

47. For the relationships between the Rio Grande "caudillos" and the army, see Sylvio Romero (1912). J. Love gives a detailed account of the role of Rio Grande in the "military question," which eventually led to the fall of the Empire. He also reproduces a photo of the gaúchos hitching their horses to the obelisk on Rio's Avenida Rio Branco on November 1, 1930.

48. For the economic role of Rio Grande as a supplier of the internal market, see the chapter on "Extremo sul - o precoce desenvolvimento voltado para dentro," in Antonio Barros de Castro (1971), II.

49. See chapter VI, below.