In Search of a Story Engine

Abstract Narratives of economic miracles have been structured by a story engine, or a source of tension capable of organizing the unfolding of a narrative over time in relation to context, protagonists, and outcome—in particular, the nature and scope of the social, economic, and political transformations engendered by the acceleration of economic growth. This essay explores the possible story engines of the economic miracle engineered by the military regime that governed Brazil from 1964 to 1985. It argues that the main narrative engine employed by the Brazilian government—the emergence of the state as a technocratic collector and allocator of finite resources—was supported by the global rise of the politics of scarcity cum politics of productivity after World War II. This narrative engine, however, sought to conceal the empirical engine of the milagre: the consolidation of forms of concentration that endorsed the authoritarian nature of the Brazilian developmental state.