Liberal political thought: the concept of Americanism in the Brazilian state building

Abstract

This article analyzes the political thought of Brazilian liberals in the XIX century within the historical context in which they had the largest influence. One of the most traditional lines of argumentation in the social sciences is that Brazilian liberalism was characterized by the transposition of liberal values and institutions of the Anglo-Saxon world in the Brazilian context without regard to the social environment. We challenge this interpretation with the aid of the concept of “Americanism” put forward by Richard Morse. We show that the Brazilian liberal thought was characterized by the theme of social heterogeneity, and in its arguments the idea that liberal values and institutions could not function in identical manner as in the original context was already present. The liberal thought operated with the idea that decentralized institutions would allow the citizen, starting from his individual interests, to build a public sphere characterized by the separation between the public and the private and by freedom. We analyze this characteristic starting from the idea of “self-interest properly understood” developed by Tocqueville.