Abstract
Twenty-five years after the promulgation of the 1988 Constitution, which itself initiated a new pattern of intergovernmental relations in Brazil, a question can be asked: was this new institutional design able to foster good governments at the level of the municipalities? We consider as good governments the administrations presenting fiscal balance in their public accounts. We analyze the fiscal balance for about all Brazilian municipalities (2010) by means of the Firjan Index of Fiscal Management (IFGF) released by the Federation of Industries of the State of Rio de Janeiro (Firjan). These data suggest that the municipalities yield considerably different fiscal results. Given a 0 to 1 scale, we detected municipalities with critically low fiscal management, with an index close to 0, and municipalities with excellent fiscal management, withan index close to 1. In average, the Brazilian municipalities presented an index slightly above 0.5. In order to explain such variations, we tested political and management variables with data from the Superior Electoral Tribunal (TSE) and the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE). It was observed for a set of different variables that the level of fiscal balance is related to levels of political competition and electoral participation, as well as to the educational degree of direct administration personnel in the analyzed municipalities.
good governments; federalism; fiscal balance