Alfredo Saad-Filho

King's College London | KCL · Department of International Development

This book examines the political economy of natural resource extraction in the Global South across production and social reproduction. Building on a fieldwork which stretched over six years, the book argues that natural resource extraction in the agrarian South is a multi-dimensional development strategy, whose holistic analysis necessitates attent...

Recent declarations of the end of neoliberalism in the United Kingdom, especially since the Covid-19 pandemic, are underpinned by diffuse and unstructured understandings of the neoliberal state. We argue that state intervention is both necessary and unavoidable under neoliberalism. This article shows that the ‘market-based’ reforms and the ‘rollbac...

The field of development studies has always presented difficult challenges for policymakers, academics, practitioners, journalists and concerned citizens. Methodologically, these challenges can be usefully approached from two angles.

On 3 November 2022, the annual EADI Directors’ Meeting was held at King’s College, University of London, UK. Part of the deliberations included an opening Roundtable discussion focusing on development studies in times of multiple crises.

O início da pandemia da Covid-19 trouxe uma percepção momentânea (e precipitada) de que o mundo poderia estar vivenciando o início do fim do neoliberalismo e o começo de um novo período histórico. Isso porque os países desenvolvidos lançaram estímulos fiscais sem precedentes na tentativa de compatibilizar o controle da pandemia e os lockdowns com a...

Climate change and neoliberalism are threat multipliers: they combine risks, increase instability and penalise disproportionately poor countries and poor people by virtue of their greater vulnerability disruption. This article examines the complex relationships between neoliberalism and climate change, and outlines a democratic economic strategy (D...

The 59th annual volume of the Socialist Register offers a careful political assessment of the organization and practices of the modern corporation that underpin the parameters of power in capitalist societies. Original essays address the mythologies of 'stakeholder' governance beloved by liberal reformers, the renewal of financial capital since th...

This chapter offers an interpretation of the background and context of the ‘June Days,’ drawing upon a Marxist analysis of the economic and social transformations in Brazil since the ‘double’ transition from import‐substituting industrialization to neoliberalism, and from the military regime to political democracy, between the mid‐1980s and the ear...

This paper offers a political economy interpretation of the covid -19 pandemic, framed around its relationship to the dynamics, contradictions and limitations of global neoliberalism. It argues that the pandemic emerged in a context of growing inequalities and deepening crises in neoliberal economies and their political systems, and that the pandem...

The course of COVID-19 was exceptionally tragic in Brazil, arguably the country with the worst pandemic response on Earth, the only one where the government not only neglected its basic duties but actively undermined measures that could have contained the pandemic and protected the population, and the greatest experiment in ‘herd immunity’ in moder...

This chapter explores the limitations and crises of neoliberal democracy after the GFC. It shows that, given the political, institutional and other fragilities of neoliberal democracy, the stresses caused by the most severe economic crisis since 1929 created deep fractures in society, that could not be healed easily. These tensions worsened with th...

This chapter focuses on the political forms associated with neoliberalism. It shows that the transitions to neoliberalism followed different paths but, by the 1990s, a specifically neoliberal form of democracy had become the political form of the system of accumulation. Examination of the key features, contradictions and limitations of neoliberal d...

Pandemics are socially and historically specific. They impact upon individuals through the collectivities in which they live, travel, workd and find entertainment; correspondingly, pandemics must be tackled by societies at specific places and moments in time. The analysis of their course and the appropriate lessons must be similarly contextual.

The USA had the highest number of COVID-19 cases (32.1 million) and deaths (572,200) in the world, as of 26 April 2021. These tragic outcomes were due to large-scale mismanagement, that started even before the arrival of the pandemic. It is widely known that the US healthcare system is both extensively privatised and highly decentralised, with a sk...

This chapter outlines the theoretical framework and the main concepts underpinning the analysis of the three crises in this book, focusing on the concepts of neoliberalism, financialisation and system of accumulation.

In early 2020, UK public life became dominated by the convergence of a calamitous Brexit with a catastrophic pandemic.

In early June 2021, India had reported nearly 30 million cases and 350,000 deaths due to COVID-19, placing it near the top of the lists of worst-affected countries (these figures are likely to be significant underestimates; Gettleman et al., 2021; The Economist. (2021). India is struggling with a catastrophic second wave).

This chapter examines the economic paradox of neoliberalism, that global neoliberalism has enjoyed the most favourable conditions for accumulation in generations, yet the neoliberal AEs have been unable to capitalise on them.

The COVID-19 pandemic was immersed in a neoliberal context, but it also developed in national circumstances and within given political conditions.

This chapter reviews the impact of COVID-19 across the economy, politics and the dominant ideologies. The economic contraction caused by the pandemic was the most severe since the dawn of capitalism. The speed of the collapse was stunning, and it led most governments to draw up emergency plans that, at least initially, were based on the experience...

Grupo de Estudos de Economia e Polí -tica (GEEP) do IESP-UERJ tem a satisfaça o de apresentar seu quarto boletim, intitulado "obsta culos ao desenvolvimento econo mico com inclusa o social no Brasil". Este Boletim GEEP conta com cinco artigos de pesquisado-res do grupo e de convidados especiais, que abordam temas relacionados a questo es es-trutura...

We are amidst what can be termed an ongoing authoritarian turn in global politics. While Trump, one of its important examples, is no longer in office in the United States, there remain many countries under the sway of authoritarian leaders, such as Turkey, Egypt, Brazil, Hungary and the Philippines. The policies of Trump, Sisi, Bolsonaro, Orban and...

This article offers an interpretation of the election of Jair Bolsonaro as President of Brazil, based on the examination of its three political drivers. First the economic and political crisis of global neoliberalism, and their implications for developing countries. Second, the cycles of the Brazilian left, which culminated in the rise and decline...

This book offers an economic analysis of the causes, development, and likely consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic for global neoliberalism. The analysis will draw upon the author’s previous work on neoliberalism, and on its twin crises: the economic crisis (the Global Financial Crisis (GFC), ongoing since 2007) and, subsequently, the crisis of pol...

This article introduces two previously unpublished working papers by the Brazilian economist Celso Furtado (1920–2004). Following a brief outline of his life and ideas, the arguments in the two papers are examined, taking into account their context and place in Furtado’s evolving body of work. These two papers represent a crucial turning point in F...

Ante la actual pandemia de Covid-19, este artículo analiza el cambio de postura de diversos gobiernos en todo el mundo respecto de sus regímenes económicos neoliberales y privatizadores, que limitan el papel del Estado, lo cual ha derivado en la actualidad en consecuencias desastrosas en el enfrentamiento de la enfermedad. Ahora, con la necesidad i...

Entrevista com Alfredo Saad-Filho, na qual são abordados temas como universidade e ciências sociais e as conjunturas econômica e política no mundo contemporâneo e no Brasil.

This article examines the rise of authoritarian neoliberalism in Brazil. The study draws upon a review of the achievements and limitations of the federal administrations led by the Workers’ Party (PT, 2003–2016), and the political forces pushing for the overthrow of President Dilma Rousseff. In sequence, the article examines the economic drivers an...

The main feature of capital accumulation in Brazil during the administrations led by Luís Inácio Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff of the Partido dos Trabalhadores (Workers’ Party—PT) was the continuity of neoliberalism of two varieties: inclusive (2003–2006) and developmental (2006–2013). The PT’s attachment to neoliberalism was mitigated by the pa...

Under favorable external circumstances, the pragmatic political and economic strategy of Brazil’s Partido dos Trabalhadores (Workers’ Party—PT) helped to secure short-term political stability, boosted growth, and supported an unprecedented distribution of income. However, it also meant that the PT had to accommodate to rather than transform the con...