The White Collar Republic: Patronage and Interest Representation in Minas Gerais, Brazil, 1889-1930

326 p.Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1987.The purpose of the dissertation is to study the ascent of the state of Minas Gerais in federal politics during the Brazilian First Republic (1889-1930), with a special attention to the role played in this process by the internal unification of Mineiro politics that occurred a decade after the Republican coup. Contrary to the prevailing historiography, which has explained both the reorganization of Mineiro politics and the state's prominence in the national arena as clear instances of interest representation politics, it is argued in this study that it was precisely because it did not represent either coffee interests (as it has been argued) or any other economic interest in the state, that the Mineiro political elite was able to promote a strong coalition at home and to become, together with the Sao Paulo elite, second to none in Brazilian politics. According to this view, it was not interest representation, but patrimonialism and clientelism that explain Mineiro politics during the First Republic.U of I OnlyRestricted to the U of I community idenfinitely during batch ingest of legacy ETD