The Elaboration Process of the National Policy of Regional Development in Brazil

Abstract

This paper analyses national policies on regional development from the democratization of Brazil (1985) until the beginning of the twentieth-first century. For this, in the first part of the study, it reflects on the theoretical conceptions of regional development; in the second part, it talks about the regional question in the 1988 Federal Constitution, as well as the legal and institutional changes brought up by the latter. After that, the analysis contemplates the national policies on regional development facing the economic opening and liberalization of the economy (in the 1990’s) and, finally, drafts a view on the institutionalization of the National Policy of Regional Development as a State policy in the beginning of the twentieth-first century.