Entre o pragmatismo e a ideologia: empresariado industrial, coalizão desenvolvimentista e governos petistas (2003-2016)

Abstract

This thesis examines the existence of a developmental coalition in the PT governments (2003- 16), focusing on the role played by the political action of the elite of the industrial business class inside and outside the PT power bloc. We seek to understand the logic of the main collective actors, in this case political parties and class entities in the employer sector, with emphasis on the CNI and Fiesp, in the context of the creation of the New Economic Matrix, as well as the historical-structural limits that explain the “ pragmatism under duress” of the Dilma government after the 2014 elections and the presence of industry in the “neoliberal business coalition”, as a protagonist of the political opposition that sustained the 2016 parliamentary coup. We address the problem of the political strength of industrial business and investigate the articulation between ideology and patronage in the formation of the federal government's parliamentary base. Lula and Dilma's performance in relation to their main party base, the PT, is analyzed based on the concepts of selective incentives and collective incentives coined by Angelo Panebianco, who recognizes pragmatism as a requirement for the survival of organizations, but which It also understands the party's complete departure from its founding ideology as a threat to its survival as a party organization. With this theoreticalmethodological support, we analyzed documents produced by the employer sector, the public sphere and journalistic coverage of the historical section in question. We seek to demonstrate that the PT's lack of social base for its industrial policy was the result of structural and conjunctural conditions that imposed an economic and political agenda diametrically opposed to the founding ideology of the PT and the developmentalism of its governments, which ended up generating points of tension. The industrial business community did not have the strength to take the place of the financial sector in the context of financial dominance, nor did it present a political agenda contrary to foreign capital. We argue that the moment required pragmatism, in such a way that its intensity intensified the internal conflict within the party, further weakening it as a party organization. In view of this, the group chose to preserve its electoral base and placed itself on a collision course with Dilma Rousseff, who preferred to retreat, reduce the autonomy given to Joaquim Levy and avoid a complete separation from the government of her party and its electoral base, which partly explains the government's political isolation and its defeat in 2016.