Great nation vs. great country: South Korea and Brazil following different pathways

Abstract

This dissertation aims to make sense of an alleged puzzle conformed by the outcomes of the socio-economic, industrial, and technological developmental paths of South Korea and Brazil from the 1960s until the 1970s. Departing from different backgrounds in regard to their industrial capacity, infrastructure, per capita income, external threats, and natural resources, then greatly favoring Brazil, a few decades later they exhibited contrasting outcomes, now greatly favoring South Korea. It employs a process-tracing methodology to study their developmental trajectories as a function of ideological, institutional, and political factors and arrangements. It assumes that ideas matter and, particularly, when combined with history and institutions, are critical explanatory elements in a transformational process. The historical institutionalist analytic framework adopted is enriched by integration with the organized capitalism and the developmental State approaches. The dissertation concludes that the diverse outcomes at the end of the 1970s, when a new long-term differentiation pattern sets in, were mainly due to unique views and implementation of economic nationalism and nation-building ideas in each, which conjured gradually more contrasting development agendas as the period progressed. Further, the respective power bloc’s disputes comprised the political arena where policies and State-business arrangements accommodated.