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The Brazilian Place Equality Regime

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Inequality and Governance in the Metropolis

Part of the book series: Comparative Territorial Politics ((COMPTPOL))

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Abstract

This chapter examines the Brazilian regime of place equality, in which municipalities are fully in charge of social service provision. The analysis outlines national policies toward place equality and their effects on revenue and spending inequality among Brazilian municipalities in general as well as in five selected metropolitan regions. The chapter demonstrates that, although local governments possess an important role in the delivery of public policies in Brazil, as well as constitutionally protected local autonomy, local policies are implemented under moderate central government supervision. Shared revenues and conditional federal transfers sharply diminish the disparities among municipalities in their capacity to fund their own policies through self-generated revenues. Despite this effect from the Brazilian place equality regime, however, inequality among municipalities persists.

The research on which this chapter was based has been supported by the Fundação de Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP) and Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq) to the Center for Metropolitan Studies. The author thanks Edgard Fusaro, Patrick Silva, and Paulo Loyola for their helpful research assistance. Several meetings of the International Metropolitan Observatory greatly contributed to frame this chapter. I am particularly grateful to comments by Jefferey Sellers, Daniel Kübler, Eran Razin, Fred Lazin, Vincent Hoffman-Martinot, Alan Walks, Tomáš Kostelecký, and Charles Jeffery.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Departement of Political Science and Center for Metropolitan Studies, University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brasil

    Marta Arretche

Authors
  1. Marta Arretche
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Southern California, Los Angeles, USA

    Jefferey M. Sellers

  2. University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil

    Marta Arretche

  3. University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

    Daniel Kübler

  4. The Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel

    Eran Razin

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Arretche, M. (2017). The Brazilian Place Equality Regime. In: Sellers, J., Arretche, M., Kübler, D., Razin, E. (eds) Inequality and Governance in the Metropolis. Comparative Territorial Politics. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-57378-0_7

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