Direitos econômicos, sociais e culturais e o federalismo fiscal: dilemas da coordenação e cooperação federativas

Abstract

Economic, social, and cultural rights can only be realized within the framework of the Democratic Rule of Law insofar as government policies are guided by an efficient tax collection and committed to a wide redistribution of resources that guarantee the federated entities the financial capacity to adopt social policies. Thus, understanding that (i) the setback in economic, social and cultural rights affects unequally the different strata and social groups; and that (ii) the protection of these rights is a task that cannot be exercised autonomously by federated entities, demanding some level of joint action from the different spheres of power, we question: to what extent do federative coordination and collaboration guarantee protection (or, at least, the non-regression) of social rights? This research was carried out using the hermeneutic-phenomenological method. In addition to literature review, we use statistical data, journalistic materials, and jurisprudence. Taking as a general objective to evaluate to what extent federative coordination and cooperation guarantee the protection of economic, social, and cultural rights, three specific objectives were formulated, consolidating the structure of this work. As a first objective, we set out to critically describe the legal protection given internationally and nationally to economic, social, and cultural rights. We start with a decolonial approach to the hegemonic discourse in the field of human rights, and then analyze capitalism and modernity as determinant phenomena in the non-protection of economic, social, and cultural rights. In the sequence, we intend to deconstruct some myths about economic, social, and cultural rights, making a brief critical historical review and examining the international normative and constitutional provisions aimed at protecting economic, social, and cultural rights. As a second objective, we propose to identify the main characteristics and problems of the Brazilian fiscal federalism model. We explore some elements related to the legal and socio-historical construction of federalism in Brazil, analyzing the centralizing and decentralizing tendencies of political power from two axes: federalism as a guarantee against state authoritarianism and federalism as a tendentially more democratic response to deep regional inequalities. We also address the division of competences in the Federal Constitution of 1988 through the distribution of administrative, legislative, and fiscal competences, and we face some issues that clarify the relationship between taxation and social spending. As a third and last objective, we seek to analyze the role of 9 federative coordination and cooperation in view of the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic in guaranteeing economic, social, and cultural rights. To this end, we chose to verify the disproportionate impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on different strata and social groups, especially due to the setback in economic, social, and cultural rights and the deepening of inequality: we conceptualized inequality and then found some data on the uneven effects of the pandemic in Latin America and Brazil. Complementing the impact analysis, we distinguish the concepts of cooperation and coordination and specifically address issues involving federal coordination and cooperation through national immunization planning against the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus.