Industrial policy and State-business relations in Brazil: the governance of productive development policies

This article deals with the new productive development policies in countries that, like the case of Brazil, have political systems permeable to business elite particularistic interests. In this regard, the analysis of industrial policies is important because public-private coordination use to be needed. The establishment of a new cycle of industrial policies between 2003 and 2016 was accompanied by the construction of a governance structure to increase coordination with companies, supposedly in more innovative and competitive sectors. However, using historical institutional analysis, it is intended to demonstrate that these governance structures, as formal institutions, were supplanted in practice by the traditional rules of the game in the relationship between the State and businessmen. These rules of the game tend to promote enterprises and sectors that are already well established. In this way, policies that were designed to favor a structural transformation, ended up having a protectionist and defensive bias of traditional industries.