ESTADO NEOLIBERAL E GRANDE TRANSFORMISMO NO BRASIL

The article analyzes the educational policies of Lula’s third administration (2023-2026) considering the persistence of the neoliberal state in Brazil, with Grand Transformism as its central interpretive category. The objective is to identify continuities, changes, and contradictions between the expansion of educational rights and the persistence of mechanisms associated with neoliberal rationality. The research adopts a qualitative, analytical-interpretive approach, based on documentary analysis of legislation, programs, guidelines, and government documents, combined with a critical literature review. The analysis considers the objectives, implementation mechanisms, access criteria, conditionalities, and forms of monitoring, evaluation, and accountability present in the policies examined. The results reveal different configurations: some policies are predominantly redistributive and expand rights, while others combine this expansion with managerial mechanisms, conditionalities, and forms of performance-based regulation. The article concludes that the expansion of state action in education does not represent a break with the neoliberal configuration of the state but rather reveals changes and continuities that manifest themselves differently across the policies analyzed.