Brazil

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Brazil has undergone transformative change since the 1980s, from an authoritarian regime to a democratic society advancing on all fronts—political, social, economic, and diplomatic. In Starting Over, Albert Fishlow traces the evolution of this member of the BRICS group over the last twenty-five years and looks toward the future as the newly elected president, Dilma Rousseff, follows her very popular predecessor, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, or "Lula."

The transformation of the country began with the founding of the Nova República and the Constitution of 1988, which established a strong executive and encased key social principles such as a citizen's right to education and health care. Then the Real Plan of 1994—initiated under President Fernando Henrique Cardoso—set the stage for economic growth and a stable economy. 

Albert Fishlow is a professor emeritus of international and public affairs at Columbia University. He is the former director of the Columbia Institute of Latin American Studies and Center for the Study of Brazil at Columbia. Professor Fishlow is an economist, a professor emeritus of economics at the University of California, Berkeley. He was previously the Paul A. Volcker Senior Fellow for International Economics at the Council of Foreign Relations.

In 1999, he was awarded the National Order of the Southern Cross by the government of Brazil.

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