Measuring Fiscal Federalism and Decentralization in Latin American: Argentina and Brazil in Comparat

The 1988 Constitution of the Federative Republic of Brazil (CFR) recognized four levels of government: the federal government, the states (26 states), the Federal District in which is located the capital of the country, Brasilia, and the municipalities. [...] However, the evolution of the decentralization processes that occurred in both countries resulted in subnational governments being in charge of implementation, whereas the federal governments reserved the role of coordinators and setting the general guidelines in those policies. [...] While in the beginning of the 80s, two thirds of federal transfers came from the RCFI (Schwarts and Liuksila 1997:401), in the last decade, amounts of RCFI represent an average of 68 percent of total federal transfers from 2002 and 2012. [...] 160 prescription: ‘It is forbidden to withhold or to make any restriction to the remittance and use of the funds assigned in this section to the states, to the Federal District and to the municipalities, including any tax additions and increases’. [...] The level of subnational public expenditure is a useful index to measure the size of subnational administration of competences and public services and it is complementary to the former index (transfers of federal funds index) to measure the degree of dependency or autonomy with which levels of governments perform their responsibilities.