ABSTRACT
Jurists and political figures in Brazil paved the way for constituting a unique locus of authority, the Social State, an institutional complex capable of establishing such a correlation between individual enterprise and collective interest. This chapter supports the hypothesis that the political opening agenda in Brazil was deeply connected to the increasing exhaustion with the technocratic politics developed in the Global North. It shows how the passage from authoritarian rule to democracy in Brazil was directly informed by growing opposition to the technocratic state. Despite divergences between the Global South and the Global North, elites sought to renew the global order and the legitimacy of local government, a process that underpinned the transition to the era of human rights and neoliberalism. International organizations played a central role in both US Senate disputes with the White House and the intellectual mobilization around US foreign policy, especially concerning Latin America.
