Hegemonia financeira na era digital: o grupo empresarial XP no contexto de transição global

Abstract

This thesis analyzes how financial market agents build hegemony in the Digital Age. It is argued that the core of high finance in the Digital Age can be studied from the triangulation between the flows of liquidity, information and protection that permeate the relationships between financial institutions, the Big Five global platform corporations and the state apparatus of the United States. From this center of gravity, financial market agents operate in the form of a transnational network, forging alliances and mobilizing capacities to influence the political results of different countries. To analyze the relevance of the working hypothesis, five procedures are performed. First, a conceptual framework on the political, ideological, economic and technological mechanisms that permeate the phenomenon of financial hegemony at the levels of national and international analysis is specified. Second, the model specified is operationalized by delimiting the relationships between high finance, state elites and technological context throughout the hegemony cycles of the world-system. Third, we analyze the challenges that the contemporary systemic transition imposes for the reproduction of financial hegemony, as well as the opportunities that it presents for semi-peripheral countries. Fourth, it analyzes the interactions between political, economic and ideological mechanisms that permeated the financialization process in Brazil between 1981 and 2018. Fifth, a case study is carried out on the trajectory constitution, organizational ecology and political action modalities of the XP Financial Transnational Group XP. In the conclusion, the arguments developed are summarized, the theoretical and normative implications of the research results are indicated, and suggestions for the continuity of the research agenda are presented. Methodologically, the thesis is based on literature review, historical process tracing, descriptive statistics, and critical analysis of the content of official documents, technical reports, newspaper news, performances available on the Internet, advertisements, and semi-structured interviews. Theoretically, the thesis seeks to contribute to the strengthening of a multidisciplinary field of studies on the ways in which financial market agents try to build hegemony in the Digital Age. From a social point of view, we intend to collaborate to advance the debate on the potential that the technologies of the second wave of innovations of the Digital Era have to anchor a national development project that is socially fair, institutionally creative and environmentally sustainable.