Recognizing that it is important to study the behavior of the entrepreneurial class in relation not only to models of development and economic policy but also as linked to political institutions and democracy, this paper analyzes the relationship between the political action of entrepreneurs and the process of institutionalization and consolidation of democracy pertaining to the post-1988 Brazilian political regime. Taking the Commercial Association of São Paulo and the Federation of Commerce of the State of São Paulo as our references, we verify that, in relation to the authoritarian period, there was much more continuity than rupture in the ways in which these organizations thought and acted with regard to political institutions. This does not mean that they did not engage in any type of relatively effective political action, nor that there were no changes at all in their behavior. Rather, we argue that they acted with little regard to the characteristics of the arrangements that came to prevail in political institutions during the return and consolidation of democracy. Furthermore, we verify that this type of political action corroborates - through action, but also through lack of action - certain particularities of the prevailing political regime.
Entrepreneurs; Democracy; Brazil; Politics and government during the nineties; Corporativism