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a difícil transformação da burocracia prebendária em burocracia constitucional

Abstract

The paper explores possible similarities between the development of Brazil and the Spanish speaking republics in South America during the XIX century. As opposed to the Spanish speaking “Vice Reynados”, Brazil had a rather undeveloped bureaucracy in colonial times. However, as the Portuguese head of government moved to Rio de Janeiro in 1808 bureaucracy grew faster than before. Nonetheless, it grew along the lines of the Ancien Régime ideas of governmental organization: justice, government, fazenda (royal treasury) and war. Along these lines it was the judicial service that was best organized, while the treasury and the military only increased in the last decades of the century.