FINANCING THE DEVELOPMENT AND INFRASTRUCTURAL POWER OF THE BRAZILIAN STATE

Neoliberal professional ecologies are among the main drivers behind the state's disinvestment in Brazil's infrastructure. This policy agenda has been dominant since the 2016 coup d'etat, which ousted the former president Dilma Rousseff. This work will bring together two datasets to access this agenda. On the one hand, a set of macroeconomic data from the last ten years on the transformations of institutional investors' shareholding, such as state-owned banks and pension funds, in infrastructure sectors including energy, telecoms, and sanitation. On the other hand, an exhaustive sample of professional economists' networks who play a role as pundits in media outlets to build consensus in public opinion, revealing their mechanisms of legitimation for jurisdictional claims over public finances. By combining these datasets, this article aims to assess the undermining effects that the new infrastructural finance coalitions pose to Brazil's state capacities. Furthermore, it seeks to identify different types of investors, qualifying both their interests and strategic behaviors.