International experience is decisive for ruling groups

A study tracks the international education of the Brazilian elite ruling class and identifies their strategies in competing for highly visible positions as spokespeople for word leaders.

By Fábio de Castro

Agência FAPESP – A good part of Brazil’s ruling elite were educated overseas. To establish themselves in high political positions, these individuals had the help of solid, internationally extended institutional networks, according to an extensive study that analyzed the intellectual and professional trajectories of Brazilians who sought education outside the country.

One of the study’s main conclusions is that the members of this ruling class, which is not socially or intellectually homogeneous, act as mediators for the export and import of institutional models from so-called dominant societies when they return from their studies.

Initiated in 2007, the Thematic Project “International circulation and background of Brazilian ruling classes,” financed by FAPESP and coordinated by Letícia Bicalho Canedo of the Universidade Estadual de Campinas (Unicamp) School of Education, involved an interdisciplinary team of researchers from the fields of history, anthropology, sociology, education, law and political science.

According to Canedo, the project was based on an earlier database, produced by the same team of researchers, of Brazilian scholarship winners who sought doctorates at high-level institutions overseas.

Using information on students and researchers who had studied abroad with funding from FAPESP, the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq), and the Brazilian Federal Agency for the Support and Evaluation of Graduate Education (Capes), the database was created with support from the collaboration of Capes and Cofecub, the French Committee for Evaluation of University Cooperation with Brazil. The database made it possible to study the movement of Brazilian scholarship winners abroad since 1951.

One of the Thematic Project’s objectives was to reconstruct the networks and alliances of public policy makers in Brazil who had academic and technical training and to understand the allocation of social and institutional resources that qualify these individuals to participate in global negotiations. Canedo said that the project should contribute to future reflections on the circulation and reception of ideas and people in the transformation of national institutions.

“A large part of our ruling elite has been through specialized international training. Our objective is to understand how this process relates to the construction of ‘globalization’—or the so-called ‘universalism project’—and especially to the establishment of ‘universalist’ government principles,” Canedo told Agência FAPESP.

Using the available databases, the various studies related to the Thematic Project examined the international agents’ actions through the lens of the sociology of globalization. “The theme of globalization has always been in the hands of economists. It hadn’t been looked at from the perspective of historians, sociologists and anthropologists,” Canedo remarked. 

In addition to the databases from previous studies, the Thematic Project’s participants used various research methods and techniques, especially interviews, and they consulted many sources for the qualitative analysis of intellectual production and the occupation of public positions by agents related to the period studied.

Because of the complexity of the topic, the team marshaled a network of international researchers who used questionnaires , investigation methods and data-processing techniques over a five-year period in France, Argentina, Mexico and other countries.

Candeo explained, “Globalization is frequently understood as a finished process, but, based on previous studies, we found that it is a field of power under construction. The international consultants helped us pass along this perspective and not the perspective of diverse phenomena related to globalization.”

International strategy

The shape of the discussion on globalization was analyzed through a study of the Brazilian ruling groups. The study’s main hypothesis was based on an “international strategy” concept proposed by Yves Dezalay, a member of France’s National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) and one of the Thematic Project’s international consultants.

The “international strategy” concept refers to the way in which individuals use international capital—university degrees, technical knowledge, contacts, resources, prestige and legitimacy obtained abroad—to build careers in their home countries. We used a concept that helped to understand the ways in which the diverse forms of articulating international capital were maximized inside Brazil or Argentina and administrated internationally,” explained Canedo.

“We were able to show that so-called globalization comes from individuals who are part of very extensive international networks that reflect the interests of hegemonic groups as they contribute to the acceptance of international rules of public policy conduct,” Canedo said.

At the same time,” he added, “these individuals become part of a circuit that assures them highly visible spots in the construction of world governance. “However, as they become protagonists, these agents never call this world governance into question.”

Canedo says the analytical strength of the broad study is new. It addresses the social characteristics of groups that had access to significant international activities, such as education, as well as the skills and resources they acquired during their time overseas and their use of this arsenal at an international level.

The studies conducted within the Thematic Project show the effects of acquiring an international academic degree on individuals’ access to global networks. “It’s a type of intermediary function that allows them to control the repatriation of young PhDs and the importation of new tools for analysis, new sets of problems, and new governmental alliances and to transform the space for international circulation occupying the pathways of circulation between different groups. This way, the formation of new PhDs is controlled, along with the importation of new thematics and the connections with governmental networks,” Canedo said.

One of the Thematic Project’s most relevant results, according to Canedo, is its demonstration of how the international market of scientific knowledge production works. The study’s results will be synthesized in the book Estratégias educativas das elites nacionais no mundo globalizado [Educational Strategies of the National Elite in the Globalized World], slated for release in August.