Dados is one of the most widely-read social sciences journals in Latin America. Created in 1966, it publishes innovative works, originating from academic research, by Brazilian and foreign authors. Edited by IESP-UERJ, it aims to reconcile scientific rigor and academic excellence with an emphasis on public debate based on the analysis of substantive issues of society and politics.
Dados vol. 35 n. 3 Rio de Janeiro 1992
Abstract
The article examines the formation and consolidation of the "Cardinais of Social Security", a group of bureaucrats from the federal government's now extinct industrial workers pension fund (Instituto de Aponsentadoria e Pensões dos Industriários, or IAPI). For four decades, starting in 1937, the IAPI played a central role in Brazil's social security policy. The creation of this bureaucracy and forging of its identity can be understood both as the Brazilian state's response to a need to incorporate industrial workers into the social security system in a controlled fashion and, at the same time, as the result of a Vargas Administration experiment in administrative reform. Based on interviews, texts, publications, and other sources from the IAPI and the Labor, Industry, and Commerce Ministry for the 1937-1945 period, the article analyzes the construction of this group's identity, comparing it with the Weberian model of bureaucracy. the "Cardinais" were regarded as neutral, competent bureaucrats, obedient to laws and to hierarchy, servants of the public interest, and averse to the intervention of political and corporatist interests. The group used this identity as a political resource that allowed it to climb the public administrative ladder and outlive the federal administration that parented it, as well as subsequent ones. The IAPI's bureaucrats reached the apex of their careers as the devisers and main managers of the post-1964 unified social security system.
Os Cardeais da Previdência Social: Gênese e Consolidação de uma Elite Burocrática
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