mobilization and empowerment of a broad coalition, and
more important, it in turn led to the further empowerment of
an even broader segment of society than what came before
—even though clearly this segment was much less broad
than the entire society, and England would remain far from
a true democracy for more than another two hundred years.
The factors leading to the emergence of inclusive
institutions in the North American colonies were also
similar, as we saw in the first chapter. Once again, the path
starting in Virginia, Carolina, Maryland, and Massachusetts
and leading up to the Declaration of Independence and to
the consolidation of inclusive political institutions in the
United States was one of empowerment for increasingly
broader segments in society.
The French Revolution, too, is an example of
empowerment of a broader segment of society, which rose
up against the ancien régime in France and managed to
pave the way for a more pluralistic political system. But the
French Revolution, especially the interlude of the Terror
under Robespierre, a repressive and murderous regime,
also illustrates how the process of empowerment is not
without its pitfalls. Ultimately, however, Robespierre and his
Jacobin cadres were cast aside, and the most important
inheritance from the French Revolution became not the
guillotine but the far-ranging reforms that the revolution
implemented in France and other parts of Europe.
There are many parallels between these historical
processes of empowerment and what took place in Brazil
starting in the 1970s. Though one root of the Workers’
Party is the trade union movement, right from its early days,
leaders such as Lula, along with the many intellectuals and
opposition politicians who lent their support to the party,
sought to make it into a broad coalition. These impulses
began to fuse with local social movements all over the
country, as the party took over local governments,
encouraging civic participation and causing a sort of
revolution in governance throughout the country. In Brazil, in
contrast with England in the seventeenth century or France
at the turn of the eighteenth century, there was no radical
revolution igniting the process of transforming political
institutions at one fell swoop. But the process of
empowerment that started in the factories of São Bernardo