Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how important is to build up a
theoretical framework to properly grasp the meaning of the federalism issue in Brazil. Firstly,
we make a survey of the main theories approaching the federalism subject in order to
analyze whether they fit or not in the Brazilian case. Focusing then on the recent literature
about Brazilian federalism, we show how its lack of analytical perspective fails to explain
the interactions between the different levels of governments occurred in the last decades. For
this reason, we propose a line of research adjusted to the Brazilian federalism issue, which
must take into account not only the specific political environment existing in that country,
but also the rationality of the institutions and social organized groups involved in that federative
settling.

JEL Classification: H11; H50; B49.