Article



Dados n. 20 Rio de Janeiro 1979

Os Limites da Legitimidade Autoritária no Brasil

McDonough, Peter

Abstract

While authoritarian demobilization protects elites from the pressures of mass society, it may fail to establish the ground-rules by which elites are protected from one another. This study draws on interviews conducted with 251 Brazilian elites during the presidency of General Emílio Medici (1969-73) in order to determine (1) their perceptions of the distribution of power; (2) their preferences with respect to the redistribution of power; and (3) the extent of the legitimacy which they accord to the regime. The judgment of the elites, fairly widespread even among conservative sectors, is that three groups have excessive power: the governmental technocrats, the multinational corporations, and the military. The prolongation of military rule appears not only to jeopardize group-specific interests but also to violate generic standards of inter-group competition and accommodation, thereby restricting the legitimacy of the authoritarian system.

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Os Limites da Legitimidade Autoritária no Brasil