This article raises several issues for critical debate on the reform of the Brazilian electrical sector during the 1990s. We relate endogenous and exogenous factors, which are methodologically connected through an historical-structural approach that links Brazilian industrialization processes to international economic dynamics. Thus, the neo-liberal reforms of the decade of the 1990s are seen in the context of the wave of liberalizations promoted in connection with globalization processes, in which the dynamics of capitalism - linked to the expansion of finance capital - has led to the shrinking of nation-states. In this regard, the Brazilian electrical sector can be considered exemplary: its privatization process, planned through consideration of economic and financial issues alone, relegated concerns for consumers' needs to a secondary level, thus causing problems related to citizenship and eventually provoking difficulties of supply to the population.
globalization; neo-liberalism; state reform; market; restructuring of the electrical sector; privatization
