National sovereignty and the mundialization of capital: Brazil under Fernando Henrique Cardoso´s administration

Abstract

This paper, previously delivered as a lecture by its author, addresses the issue of the relations between the mondialization process and its implications to national sovereignty, particularly during Fernando Henrique Cardoso's presidency in Brazil. Mundialization is viewed as a process inscribed in the logic of capital since its rise as the dominant system. Sovereignty, in its turn, is seen as the qualification of state power, translated into a relationship between social classes and their fractions. These concepts are useful to account for the participation of Brazilian state agents in a certain period, particularly during Cardoso's term in office, as true local managers of the interest of transnational capital and, therefore, as formulators and implementers of action plans, within the state apparatus, targeted to the submission of political organs of sovereignty to technical organs of economic burocracy.