Bulletin n. 3/2007
December 2007
CONTENTS
  • Section A) The theory and practise of the federal states and multi-level systems of government
  • Section B) Global governance and international organizations
  • Section C) Regional integration processes
  • Section D) Federalism as a political idea
    • Schneider a A.
    Governance Reform and Institutional Change in Brazil: Federalism and Tax
    in Commonwealth and Comparative Politics , Vol. 45 n. 4 ,  2007 ,  475 - 498
    This paper contrasts two processes of governance reform in Brazil in the 1990s: federal relations and tax. The degree of institutional change possible in each case depended on whether powerful actors reached a new social pact. Discarding old social pacts in favour of new ones was not easy, however, and it only occurred when the interests and powers of actors had shifted sufficiently through a series of incremental changes. In the case of federal relations, incremental changes cumulated until they breached a threshold and a wholesale change could occur. In the case of tax, the fundamental actors and interests remained the same, and incremental change occurred only within the institutions that already existed. The point of this distinction is more than semantic. A social pact is necessary for wholesale institutional change, and this is the only way to attain an increase in both the capacity and the accountability of government institutions. Without such wholesale change, governance reform occurs within existing institutions and therefore does not constitute an increase in both capacity and accountability.
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