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Education Funding in a Recentralizing Democracy: A Cautionary Tale of Four Brazilian Cities

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Joseph C. Sands Jr.
Joseph C. Sands Jr.*
Affiliation:
Federal University of Amazonas, Manaus. jsandssj@yahoo.com
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Abstract

The administration of President Fernando Henrique Cardoso enacted measures to constrain subnational politicians in a newly democratized and highly decentralized federal system. Lacking sufficient accountability at the subnational level, the central government attempted to increase its control of educational funding and minimize local discretion over educational spending. These reforms constrained the distribution of intergovernmental transfers, but entrusted the disbursement of educational spending to local oversight. This article argues that while the constraints protected the federal treasury from predatory practices, the local oversight did not protect educational spending from mayoral discretion. This argument is based on an analysis of initial reform implementation in four municipal school systems. The mayors responded to the federal initiatives in a variety of ways, but these were based on the requirements of their own political survival. The four cases thereby become studies in how one effort to recentralize democracy is working in Brazil.

Type
Research
Information
Latin American Politics and Society , Volume 50 , Issue 3 , Fall 2008 , pp. 93 - 120
Copyright
Copyright © University of Miami 2008

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