The rise of Estado Novo in Brazil gave birth to many political-bureaucratic apparatuses. On one hand, those apparatuses were a clear expression of the new regime's authoritarian ideology, administrative reform and way of regulating social classes' interests and institutional politics. On the other hand, they were also a privileged channel through which the ideology of the new authoritarian state manifests and spreads itself through the political system. Such feature is important to the understanding of the success of authoritarianism in Brazil and its assimilation by regional political elites, even by the anti-Vargas ones. This article analyses the trajectory and the discourse of three professional politicians from São Paulo after 1937, in order to document how this group converted to the authoritarianism of Estado Novo. This conversion could be explained, the article postulates, by the assimilation of the State ideology as a political formula and not only as a constrained consent to the authoritarian rhetoric. Therefore, the article present empirical elements to the understanding of the way the State apparatus, especially the Administrative Departments, operated as an efficient tool of integration between regional political groups and the ideas of the new authoritarian regime.
Getúlio Vargas; authoritarian ideology; Paulista oligarchy; professional politicians; administrative departments