WITH THE MILITARY regime over, the new 1988 Brazilian constitution promoted political and financial decentralization as well as measures to improve social rights. Unfortunately, at present, there are clear budgetary constraints at federal level and also difficulties in creating governing coalitions. The impacts of the new constitution at sub-national level are still not clear.

This book presents a study on the background to the adoption of the present political and economic arrangements in Brazil, on how these arrangements operate in practice and on their consequences for welfare policies and, in particular, for education. Among the topics addressed in the book are federalism, decentralization and inter-governmental relations on the one hand, and democratization, which provided the driving force for decentralization, on the other.

A brief introductory literature review reveals that the country was facing many unresolved issues in the aftermath of the military regime. The author suggests that these issues needed to be tackled nationwide and asks how and why the new democracy chose to decentralize financial and political resources, and whether the present decentralization under democratic rule changed the allocation of public expenditure at sub-national level, particularly to education. The book analyzes the decision to decentralize and the effects of decentralization at sub-national level, and examines the decision-making process. There were two reasons for choosing the impact on education as the central focus. The first was that, throughout the world, education is recognized as playing a major role in the development process. The second is that, in Brazil itself, education is seen as an indicator of a democratic society. Thus, education and re-democratization are seen as having an important relationship in Brazil. In addition to looking at the political implications of decentralization in Brazil, the book examines the extent to which constitutional change has affected the way local goods (both political and material) are distributed among society and whether they have changed political practice. The main sentiment running through these topics is that, since re-democratization, there has been an enduring tension between national and sub-national interests, in which the latter prevails without the former being relinquished.