THE SPATIAL RESCALING OF THE DEVELOPMENTAL STATE IN BRAZIL

Abstract This paper aims to contribute to the debate on the urban and regional political economy in Brazil by exploring the relationships between the State, the institutions and spatial scales in the production and regulation of uneven spatial development in the country. Therefore, based on recent contributions in Anglo-Saxon geography, the tensions and crises of the developmental State are examined through their spatial strategies and projects. In this sense, the intention is to adapt some of the theoretical background to the Brazilian context in order to incorporate the form of its State and specific rescaling processes. A procedural methodology is used to analyze how urbanization and regional development end up creating their own mechanisms of displacement and generation of regulatory crises, as well as the corresponding strategies of political intervention to resolve them. This study is based on the idea that hegemony is contested on multiple scales, which allows the relationship between changes in the hegemonic bloc and the spatial forms of the State to be established.