| Summary: | This paper compares a federal country, Brazil, and a centralist one, Colombia,
both of which, at a given point in time, enacted a recentralization of
resources despite the differences in their economies. The hypothesis is that
similarities in expenditure autonomy of their intermediate-level governments
are a consequence of changes in that direction enacted with the new Constitutions,
dating back from 1991 in Colombia and from 1988 in Brazil. To
test such hypothesis the paper first shows the differences in economic conditions
during the 1990s in both countries after the Constitutional changes;
subsequently, it shows how the previous developments within the realm of
intergovernmental relations are very similar from the political point of view, allowing to understand how the loss of expenditure autonomy of intermediate-level governments during the 1990s took place. Finally, it concludes that the different economic realities of both national economies as well as those of intermediate-level governments, were subordinated to political priorities deriving from long-term processes. Debt allowed for the recentralization in both countries because of the use it was subject to.
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