THE DISSEMINATION OF PUBLIC ECONOMICS IN BRAZIL AT THE TURN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY: RUI BARBOSA BETWEEN LAW-MAKING AND POLICY-MAKING

Abstract

Rui Barbosa was a renowned jurist who served as the first finance minister of the Brazilian Republic, established in 1889. Despite his renown as an intellectual, Barbosa faced a severe financial crisis during his ministerial tenure and gained a bad reputation for his economic policy. In the texts produced in this context, he combined different traditions of economic thought from the point of view of the legal expert serving as economic policy-maker. In the field of public finance, while assimilating arguments associated to German state socialism and its North American developments, he was also influenced by French liberal economist Paul Leroy-Beaulieu. Through these international assimilations, Barbosa constructed an assemblage of economic ideas organized not by theoretical affiliations in the contemporary sense but around two main goals: to rationalize and legitimize his policy as finance minister and to influence the legal ordering of the Brazilian fiscal economy.