Interregional Conference on Social Policy and Welfare Reform

Federalist systems are considered centralized when the national government has greater weight in the formation and implementation of public policy and in decisions concerning resource allocation than subnational governments. In a decentralized federal system, subnational governments have some degree of autonomy or discretion in these two arenas. Even though national and subnational governments share responsibilities for policymaking and implementation, the relative autonomy or independence of action among subnational governments is an important element of the policymaking context. Assessing the degree of relative autonomy can be determined through the analysis of intergovernmental relationships across multiple policy areas. The decentralization trend observed in Mexico, the USA and Brazil in recent decades affected the relationship between the central government and state and local governments in each country. In Brazil, for example, a shift from a model that concentrated most policymaking in the federal level and limited resources accessible to subnational governments to a new arrangement with expanded roles and responsibilities of the subnational governments and transferred resources to subnational spheres has occurred