3 Questions: Ben Ross Schneider on Brazil’s crisis moment
Brazil has been much touted in the 21st century as a fast-rising “BRIC” country (Brazil, Russia, India, China) spurring global growth. But a sprawling political corruption scandal and economic turmoil have cast shadows on this once-sunny landscape. President Dilma Rousseff faces impeachment hearings over potentially misappropriating bank funds for the state, and former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is implicated in a corruption case. Ben Ross Schneider, the Ford International Professor of Political Science and director of the MIT-Brazil Program, has been studying Brazil for decades and is the editor of a new volume on the country: “New Order and Progress: Development and Democracy in Brazil,” published this month by Oxford University Press. (The book stems in part from connections forged through the MIT-Brazil Program.) Schneider talked with MIT News about the progress and setbacks Brazil is experiencing. Q: Brazil only emerged from dictatorship in the 1980s. Given the...