Health Policies in the Conservative Transition to Democracy in Brazil

Abstract

The inclusion of the Brazilian case in a survey concerning the new political conservatism, which emerged during the 1970s in the wake of an economic crisis in all industrialised nations, calls for some qualification. This is particularly so since the country is now undergoing a process of transition towards democracy. This chapter will analyse the strategies adopted by the sanitary (in most countries known as public health) movement to alter policy networks established during military dictatorships, and the constraints imposed by both the present economic crisis and the conservative nature of the transition in Brazil. Although this process is still in progress, some results can already be identified, underlining the distance between intention and action, or rather, between rhetoric and reality.