Empresários e a previdência social no Brasil

Abstract

This study aims to understand how certain business actors exercise their market power to persuade the government through lobbying and capture of the public arena in the reform processes in order to transform public social insurance arrangements into private capitalization schemes. It also proposes to highlight the dynamics of institutional change that have guided the social security reform processes in Brazil since 1998. For this analytical effort, this study will be based on the literature on market-oriented economic reforms and institutional change, as well as on official documents and reports published by the class representation entities related to the industrial and financial sector. Based on data released by entities related to the private pension sector (closed and open), the study seeks to analyze the expansion and behavior of this sector during the social security reform processes. The hypothesis to be emphasized is that such reforms have tended to make access to social security benefits more rigid and less attractive to the higher-paid segments of the working class, setting a precedent for the privatization of pension funds.