Intermunicipal Cooperation in Brazil in Front of the Mirror of History: Critical Background and Path Dependence to Create the Law of Public Consortiums

Abstract

The article analyzes the evolution of the intermunicipal consortium in Brazil under historical institutionalism. The study was carried out through literature review, documentary analysis and descriptive statistics. The theoretical argument is that critical antecedents inform the critical conjunctures, which, in turn, explain subsequent trajectories generating path dependence. Empirically, this formulation was used to analyze how the decentralization of public policies initiated in Brazil in 1988 was an essential critical antecedent. The new dimensions associated with the decentralization model were associated with the critical conjuncture of institutional changes that culminated in the approval of the Public Consortia Law of 2005. The new legislation influenced the expansion of inter-municipal associativism since that date and created a dependence of the trajectory that indicates a growth by that form of collective action. It is considered a new variable as variable ceteris paribus, assumes the explanatory capacity of the intermunicipal associativism. It was concluded that this distinctive variable can only be understood under centrifugal decentralization and the design of intergovernmental relations created after the new Constitution in 1988. Without viewing its antecedents, the results of intermunicipal associativism after 2005 cannot be explained.