Política, burocracia e democraciaas relações entre a secretaria do tesouro nacional e a comissão de assuntos econômicos no controle do endividamento público

Resumo

In the 1990s the decisions concerning public debt in Brazil underwent a process of institutionalization, in which the participation of the Federal Senate was especially relevant. The Upper House has the constitutional prerogative of defining the indebtedness limits of the three spheres of government and it also has the competence to analyze and authorize the requests of each federal entity. The fact that these prerogatives are subject to intense political dispute, as evidenced by the “irrefutable pressures” exerted by governors and even mayors, motivated senators to delegate the technical analysis of debt authorizations to the Federal Executive, so as to be protected from political pressures and to reinforce the commitment to fiscal adjustment. As a result, authorizations are only examined in the Senate after they have been approved by the National Treasury Secretariat, a division of the Ministry of Finance, which makes previous evaluations of the indebtedness possibilities according to fairly strict norms. At first sight, the delegation of the technical analysis to the bureaucracy seems to indicate the distancing of politicians from indebtedness control. However, a more thorough investigation allows the presence of political action to be identified in this process. Therefore, based on Weberian propositions about the relation between politicians and bureaucrats and on the consequent need of political control over the bureaucracy, the present research aimed to examine the fiscal problem in the Brazilian presidential system from the specific standpoint of the relations between the Senate and the governmental bureaucracy connected to public indebtedness. The qualitative methodology, by means of an exploratory case study, was considered more suitable, since it allowed a gain in depth of analysis, in spite of the loss in generalization, and enabled the observation of how tension between politicians and bureaucrats arises concretely and develops into situations either of conflict or of accommodation. Two cases of credit authorization requests from state governments that were approved by the Federal Senate were analyzed and there was a significant difference between them: the plea of the State of Minas Gerais – used as an example of a "typical” case – was approved by the National Treasury (STN), whereas the plea of the State of Rio Grande do Sul – used as an example of a case outside the institutionalized standards – was not approved by the technical evaluation of that Secretariat and thus should not, according to the established norms, be sent to the Senate. The analysis of the cases allowed new aspects, although in the form of hypotheses, to be brought to light and they should be considered in future studies about the relations between politics and bureaucracy in the Brazilian fiscal federalism. First, the political dimension was shown to still play an important role in the authorizations of state indebtedness. However, political action was more prominent at moments when tension between politicians and bureaucrats was exacerbated, as for example when the technical decision opposed political will. Moreover, participation of the Judicial Power proved to be important to the resolution of conflict between politicians and bureaucrats, which suggests that the inclusion of this Power in future studies may enrich the theoretical debate in Brazil. Finally, it was possible to detect an indication that the flexibilization of fiscal rules would already be desirable in the new Brazilian fiscal context.

Ficha do documento

Tipo

Dissertação

Ano

2009

Instituição

Fundação Getulio Vargas

Fonte

Repositório da FGV

Idioma

Português

Acesso

Acesso aberto

Identificador

oai:repositorio.fgv.br:10438/2443

Temas

EconomiaPolíticas PúblicasFinanças PúblicasDesenvolvimento RegionalAdministração Pública

Palavras-chave

Transformações do Estado e políticas públicasFederalismo fiscalBurocraciaPolíticaEndividamento públicoPoliticsBureaucracyFiscal federalismPublic indebtednessAdministração públicaDívida pública - BrasilBurocracia - BrasilPresidencialismo - BrasilControle administrativo