Comments on the article Social protection in Brazil: universalism and targeting in the FHC and Lula administrations Comentários sobre o artigo A proteção social no Brasil: universalismo e focalização nos governos FHC e Lula

I would like to start by emphasizing the author’s effort to make a comparative analysis of the social policy in the Fernando Henrique Cardoso – FHC and Lula administrations. Nilson Costa performs this non-trivial task in an unbiased and analytical fashion while attempting to identify, although in a descriptive way, the paths and decisions which were made regarding social policy by the last two administrations in Brazil. However, considering that the article, although timidly, concludes that social policies in the Lula administration are not necessarily characterized by innovations, but by maintenance and/or expansion of policies created by the previous government, the article’s title does not convey what I feel to be its main contribution. Thus, it would be interesting to have a title which captured this, up to a certain point, counter-intuitive result: “Innovation versus Imitation: The Brazilian Social Policy under the FHC and Lula Administrations”. The article begins by making a distinction between two opposing social policy agendas which arose in the 90s in Brazil: the “macroeconomic perspective and the institutionalist protection perspec-