Artificial corporatism: A portal to power for accountants in Brazil

The political history of Brazil includes a period of colonisation by the Portuguese, the establishment of an imperial court, a period of rule by various military juntas, dictatorship and democracy. Drawing on archival based research conducted in Brazil and informed by theorisations of the contribution of interest governance to social order and corporatism, this study focuses on the transformation of the modus operandi of accountants and their ascendancy in this country. The study covers the period between 1902 and 1946, in which dictatorship, increasing centralisation and bureaucratisation eventually gave way to a fledgling democracy. Early in the twentieth century, the state pursued a policy of sponsoring the syndicalisation of workers as a means of eliciting cooperation in exchange for (what was essentially a simulacrum of) access. In accountancy, this early form of association was constrained in many ways, but it also laid the foundations for the accounting syndicates to press for legislation for improved education and for national professional organisation in 1946.