State Capacity, Bureaucracy and Taxation in Brazilian Municipalities

abstract

Diagnostics on intergovernmental relations and implementation of public policies after the 1988 Constitution, emphasized are the decentralization, centralization or federative coordination. Without underestimating institutional mechanisms that structure vertical relationships between federal, state and municipal governments, this study aims to examine differences between the 5,500 Brazilian municipalities regarding indicators of its state capacity. The aim is to examine to what extent municipalities with professionalized bureaucracies were better able to take advantage of the transfer of responsibilities and political and administrative authority to local governments, expanding its potential for tax and implement public policies. It adopted a narrow definition of state capacity, using the “Weberian scale” proposed by Evans and as its measure. To operationalize it was considered the proportion of “statutory with higher education” among public servants in 5,500 Brazilian municipal administrations. As the dependent variable, we used the collection of property tax as a proportion of municipal own revenue. The results showed that municipal administrations with more professional public services increase their chance ratio for propriety tax collection.

Keywords:
municipal government; state capacity; bureaucracy; taxation; public policies