Abstract
The paper presents the use of an interpretative model to study the presence of economists in government, with special attention to the Brazilian case. Based on theories and concepts from sociology and policy analysis, a model of supply and demand for economists in government is devised. To this end, we use Andrew Abbott's sociology of the system of professions and the concept of state capacities. This interpretive model is applied to the analysis of three moments in the history of economists in the Brazilian government: the emergence of the demand for economic knowledge in the Brazilian bureaucratic state in the 1930s and 1940s, the building of a more sophisticated system and community of economists around the 1960s, and the debates about inequality and inflation in the 1970s and 1980s.
Keywords:
economists in government; state capacities; sociology of the system of professions