Federalism and regional interest intermediation in Brazilian public policies

Brazil became a highly decentralized country following democratization and the 1988 Constitution. The consequences of decentralization at the federal level are quite clear: the federal government is facing financial constraints and difficulties in building governing coalitions, allowing the Presidents to govern and to implement public policies, especially those concerning fiscal control. At the level of the states, however, the results of decentralization are quite heterogeneous given the country's high degree of regional inequality. The article identifies the cleavages and tensions surrounding federal–state relations, as well as the mutual dependency of the states and the federal government. It argues that the Brazilian experience of political and financial decentralization has contributed to the prospects of democratic consolidation and has forced the federal government to negotiate and compromise with subnational governments the implementation of national policies. On the other hand, the Brazilian experience highlights the constraints of decentralization in countries with deep‐rooted regional disparities. Furthermore, the financial weakness of the federal government which has been brought about by decentralization and by fiscal control brings new tensions to the federal arrangements and to public policies. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Geopolitical Imaginary of the Brazilian Ultra-Right

The strengthening of the ultra-right in the Brazilian political scenario has a certain geopolitical imagination as one of its centres. Its main authors, on the one hand, consider Latin America as something to be avoided, and, on the other hand, value the affinities between Brazil and the United States due to the idea of a mutual belonging to a Christian West. The present article explains the most current assumptions and arguments of this discourse after 2016, based on an analysis of the geopolitical imaginary of the Brazilian ultra-right. The text reconstructs three political languages of the field – the reactionary, the ultraliberal, and the authoritarian conservative, based on the analysis of four intellectual protagonists: Olavo de Carvalho, Ernesto Araújo, Paulo Guedes, and Eduardo Villas Bôas. Finally, we raise some hypotheses about the reasons for the longevity of some fundamental traits of this geopolitical imaginary in the Brazilian scenario.