A regulação federal como mecanismo de ajuste

Abstract

This thesis analyzes the institutional mechanisms that have allowed greater control by the central government on the fiscal management and on the decentralized policies execution, with shared competence and universality character (education and health), in the period after Real Plan. The federal regulation aims to prevent local governments to adopt an antagonistic behavior of the guidelines established by the fiscal and macroeconomic policy and, in the same time, increasing supply and reduce horizontal inequalities in the funding of education and health policies. The question that arises is: how to reconcile the fiscal adjustment with the expansion of the decentralized spending in these areas? The answer pass by the role of federal regulation as a mechanism to adjust, first of all, the behavior of fiscal adjustment by means of rules and limits that restrict the decision-making autonomy of the rulers and then, in second, to set priorities and direct resources for the regulated policies. The legal and institutional strategies used were quite diverse, in order to provide proper incentives for each situation, which involve federal interests and consider the legacy of these policies. In this way, this work make a detailed study of the institutional, federative and fiscal aspects of the Fiscal Responsibility Law -FRL and about the changes in arrangements for financing education policies (Fundef / Fundeb) and basic health care (SUS), whose the capacity of these mechanisms to set federal regulation will be measured by the effects in the municipal finances and by the results obtained in the regulated policies.This study demonstrated that a convergence tendency on the direction of the fiscal adjustment and that the LRF has established a long-term balance in the municipal budget, and was observed a expressive increase in the supply of basic education and actions for basic health care, with reduction of horizontal inequalities between the municipalities. Despite these advances, the levels of public spending on education and health in Brazil are still low and were evidences about the limits imposed by economic policy to the central government spend in these areas, due to the subordination of social federal spending because of the increasing in the financial spends.