This article evalvates the Brazilian crisis in the Eighties, analysing the feedback between economic crisis and political change. Its approach emphatizes the importance of the difference between the concepts of State and political regime. These two concepts are used in a systematic way to explain the nature of the crisis and the difficulties of the transition tomards democracy. The rupture of the alliances that supported the old developmental State of the thirties in undescored, as well as the extent of the difficulties that delay the emergence of a new hegemonic pact.
