The National Development Project under the Lula government (2003-2010)

concept, controversies and evidence

Abstract

This article explores the existence of a National Development Project in Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's government (2003-2010). We address the concept of a National Development Plan before discussing the bibliography on Lula's administration and the empirical material that supports the proposed interpretation, which shows that the administration created a National Development Plan (NDP) to overcome long-term underdevelopment. The administration aimed to coherently implement ideas presented before and during the presidential term through public programs and policies. Therefore, we argue that this hypothesis is not refuted either by the existence of relative incoherence in macroeconomic policy, implementation difficulties of various kinds, and the results that combine successes and failures without fully achieving the outlined aims. We also discuss that the subtype of the pursued developmentalism was social-developmentalism, which seeks to connect the expansion of the mass market through policies of employment growth, wage growth, and social inclusion with policies aiming at supporting public and private investment and overcoming balance of payments constraints. Finally, we critically discuss interpretations that deny the existence of a National Development Project in Lula's administration before suggesting structural reasons why it failed in its larger objective.