ENERGY REVOLUTION: IDEAS, POLICY ENTREPRENEURS, AND INSTITUTIONAL CHANGE IN BRAZIL FOLLOWING THE 1973 OIL CRISIS
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Date
2018-05-03
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Johns Hopkins University
Abstract
This research focuses on the role of ideas in policymaking. It examines the Brazilian energy policy response to the 1973 oil crisis. Today, Brazil is the 10th largest energy producer in the world with a diversified and clean energy matrix. In the early 1970s, it was an energy poor country highly dependent on imported oil supplies to fuel an aggressive industrialization process. How did Brazil manage to transform its energy profile? To answer this question, I argue that it is necessary to study the policymaking process that led to the adoption of energy diversification policies in 1974-75.
Structural, exogenous, institutional, and ideational factors affected the policymaking process and thus the resulting policies. Although structural and exogenous factors played important catalyst and enabling roles, I argued that four old Developmentalist ideas, namely, 1) national development through industrialization; 2) energy as a growing point for the economy; 3) self-sufficiency; and 4) technological autonomy recombined by able policy entrepreneurs who acted through centralized institutions and through the creation of new institutions explain the policy course adopted by Brazil in the energy sector. The result was revolutionary or transformational change in the Brazilian energy sector.
The research contributes to explaining the role and impact of ideas in effecting institutional change in a less developed and authoritarian setting and in doing so, fills a knowledge gap in the academic literature on Brazil with respect to its energy sector. It also sheds light on the outcome of state intervention in this sector during the 1974-1979 period and contributes to the Developmental state literature.
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Brazil, Energy Policy, Institutional Change, Ideas