Public policies, statehoods and neoliberalizing experimentations: the state of Rio de Janeiro as a situated case

Abstract

The article aims to situate public policies, and the challenges of establishing statecraft and statehoods and state actions of another nature within the context of recent, ongoing neoliberalization processes in Latin America. It seeks to identify the structural determinants of this situation and investigates how such processes have impacted government capacities. Using the State of Rio de Janeiro as a situated case study, it examines the socio-economic and institutional implications of the neoliberalization process in the structural and conjunctural circumstances of the deep, multidimensional crisis which the society of Rio de Janeiro is currently experiencing. The article reveals the various restrictions involved in effecting an inclusive, durable development agenda within the state territory, which has increasingly been subjected to pro-market logic. Thus, it discusses the need to reconstitute the statecraft and statehoods, formed on a new basis, in order to undertake actions that carry emancipatory values.