New Legal Approaches to Policy Reform in Brazil

This article offers a description of recent arguments about the relations between the law and economic development in Brazil which have been conceived as congenial to a new state activism: the Public Capital Management (PCM) approach and the Legal Analysis of Economic Policy LAEP) approach. Ideas deriving from relevant literature are discussed, as well as their proposed role in the articulation of policies that attempt to promote economic development in line with efforts to enhance the fruition of fundamental and human rights. A stylized account of works by authors engaged in the legal analysis of practices of allocation of financial resources (regulation of the commercial credit market, portfolio investment by a state-controlled development bank and the organization of a cash-transfer program) is provided. The analytical framework of the LAEP approach is also discussed, including its treatment of monetary value transmission in the context of contractual structures that organize different aspects of economic policy