In recent years, Brazil has experienced profound political and ideological changes. It went from having a center-left government that attracted admirers beyond its borders and was considered successful, to electing a far-right government that, in addition to its climate change denialism and denial of the seriousness of the COVID-19 pandemic, is turning its back on international recommendations. What explains this turnaround, what changes is it bringing about, and can the opposition confront it?
At the same time, the pandemic brings to the surface the need to rethink social policy and discuss universal and non -market forms of social protection. In this interview, Lena Lavinas spoke with Nueva Sociedad about the situation in Brazil, but also about the effects of the financialization of social protection and how to replace fragmented responses with more universalized ones.
Lena Lavinas is a professor at the Institute of Economics of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) and a member of the School of Social Sciences of the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton and of Argentina’s Interdisciplinary Center for the Study of Public Policy (CIEPP).
