南米大陸のほぼ半分にあたる広大な面積を有するブラジルが、20世紀半ばの開発・工業化政策推進、その後の軍事独裁体制を経て、今日の発展に至る過程を概観します。政治指導者たちが汚職に手を染め経済的不平等を助長し、深刻な治安悪化による警察官の重武装化で市民が巻き添えになるなど、負の連鎖が社会を腐敗させています。一方、広範囲な国際関係の問題に積極的に関与し、欧米とは一線を画す全方位外交を展開する現代ブラジルの事情を浮き彫りにします。(cf: Brazil: What Everyone Needs to Know)
    

• Introduces Brazil as a country, as well as an idea
• Considers the economic, political, and foreign policy challenges facing Brazil today
• Covers some of the major features of the country's transformation from a poor agricultural outpost to an integral part of the 21st century global order
• Includes material on the 2018 elections, in which a polarized and disgruntled electorate voted for a wide-open field of candidates

　　
Brazil is associated in many people's minds with conviviality, sensuality, and natural beauty. Yet the country behind these images and associations is something of an enigma. It is alternately praised as the "country of the future", a rising power ready to take its place at the top tables of global governance, or written off as a perennial disappointment, a country forever failing to reach its potential, mired in corruption, inequality, poverty, and violence. These oscillations between euphoria and despair obscure a country with its own unique trajectory through the 20th and 21st centuries.
　　　
This Very Short Introduction offers an account of modern Brazil that covers some of the major features of the country's transformation, including the rise of the modern state in the mid-20th century, the violent repression of dictatorship, the domestic economic, political, and social challenges faced by the country today, and the role Brazil plays in dealing with some of the most important contemporary global problems. In doing so, Anthony Pereira highlights some of the peculiar features of Brazil's development, such as the tendency of its political leaders to engage in complicated, informal political deals; the state's welfare institutions that often exacerbate, rather than improve, the country's deep economic inequalities; and Brazil's long history of peaceful relations with its neighbours despite a high level of state violence against citizens.