Federalism and State Debt
The federalism, introduced in Brazil by the 1891 Constitution, was instituted based on the cession of power from Central Government to subnational government. This specificity of Brazilian federalism has affected the intergovernmental relations. This paper discusses the role of state debt, a kind of intergovernmental relation, in the Brazilian Federalism since the decade of 60. The state debt process and its ramification (particularly the Fiscal and Finance Restructuring Program and the Fiscal Responsibility Law) will be analysed.
Fiscal Decentralization and Subnational Fiscal Autonomy in Brazil: Some Facts of the Nineties
This paper considers some facets of the recent Brazilian experience in fiscal decentralization. For this purpose, it describes the pattern of fiscal decentralization in Brazil and, subsequently, discusses some events of the nineties pertaining to fiscal relations in the federation. Historically, Brazilian experience with fiscal federalism has been marked by ups and downs in the degree of fiscal decentralization. Satisfactory conciliation between the need to ensure a reasonable degree of financial autonomy for subnational governments, on one hand, and the requirement of coordinating fiscal instruments in order to serve national interests, on the other, has not yet been attained. The analysis of events of the nineties does not reveal a consolidated model of federalism but a transition process characterized by attempts to correct the aftermath of both excessive centralization and immoderate decentralization experienced in sequence in the past. The paper concludes that preservation of fiscal decentralization may require the imposition of restrictions on the autonomy of subnational governments, this time for economic rather than for political reasons. Este artigo examina algumas facetas da experiencia recente da descentralizacao fiscal no Brasil. Para tanto, descreve-se inicialmente a evolucao da descentralizacao fiscal desde os anos 60. Na sessao subsequente sao tratados alguns eventos que afetaram as relacoes fiscais intergovernamentais nos anos 90. Historicamente, o federalismo brasileiro foi marcado por movimentos diastolicos e sistolicos no grau de descentralizacao, geralmente em consonância com o regime politico em vigencia, fosse ele mais ou menos democratico. O objetivo de conciliar a autonomia fiscal dos entes da Federacao, por um lado, e a necessidade de coordenar os instrumentos fiscais com a finalidade de resguardar interesses nacionais, por outro, ainda nao foi alcancado. Na analise dos eventos dos anos 90, observa-se que o modelo federativo ainda nao esta consolidado, mas em processo de transicao. A consolidacao de um modelo, com a estabilizacao das relacoes fiscais intergovernamentais, dependeria da definicao da descentralizacao fiscal possivel. Observa-se que a preservacao da descentralizacao fiscal pode redundar em restricoes a autonomia dos governos subnacionais.
Code switching in Ahdaf Soueif's The Map of Love
This article examines the phenomenon of code switching in The Map of Love (1999) by the Egyptian—British writer Ahdaf Soueif. Though she chooses English as a medium for her creative expression, Soueif deploys Arabic in her narrative to represent different aspects of the linguistic and cultural norms of Egyptian society. The article's methodology is informed by Kachru's framework on contact literature and his categorization of the occurrence of literary code switching or bilingual creativity into different strategies that encompass cultural and linguistic processes. The results indicate the predominance in The Map of Love of the discourse strategies of employing lexical borrowing, culture-bound references and translational transfer. Finally, the article analyzes the functional motivation of code switching in the postcolonial context of the novel and how the use of certain creative strategies might enhance or diminish the narrative's effectiveness and readability.