Federalismo nominal brasileiro e políticas públicas

Abstract

The following work, pursuing the research line on “Democracy, Citizenship and Fundamental Rights” of the FDV Master in Laws on Fundamental Rights and Guarantees, intends undoing a myth: that the Brazilian state power is vertically organized under a federative principle. For this it is employed the dialectic methodology based on an argument that opposes what is formally said under the constitutional provision, repeated from Brazilian Constitution of 1891 until the 1988 one, that Brazil is a Federative Republic, with the power distribution, subnational autonomy, decentralization of decisions, and, mainly, cooperative intergovernmental relationship. Firstly is made an analysis of the contemporaneous federalism highlighting its nature, its origins, its main types, and basic characteristics, relating the federative model with one of the main current types of state power vertical organization. Once characterized the federative model it is analyzed the Brazilian federalism, since the colonial organization until the current one, highlighting that in some sectors there is effectively decentralization, but that this is not sufficient for characterizing the Brazilian model as a federative state. This is demonstrated both from a historic-constitutional analysis and from an analysis of some situations found in the social practice. Then it is concluded that behind the peculiar nature of Brazilian federalism there is a decentralized unitary State.