Few countries in Latin America have undergone as much economic and social change in the last 40 years as Brazil: an annual average rate of economic growth of 7% between 1950 and 1980; 4 decades of state-led import-substitution industrialization; rapid urbanization which in less than 30 years transformed a predominantly rural country into one in which two-thirds of the population live in cities; a significant enlargement of the middle classes whose mass society values and consumer expectations came to match those of the developed world. Yet in spite of these changes, Brazil stagnated in terms of income inequalities and levels of poverty: one third of its population is living below the poverty line, another third only just above it. Brazil now faces the most serious economic crisis in its history, with spiralling unemployment and an ever increasing deterioration in living standards. This volume concentrates on some of the pressing problems which are essential to understanding the questions of social and economic development and democratic consolidation; it brings together some of the best known academics in the field.