Federative arrangements in the basic structure of society: how federative institutions shape distributive justice in equitable federalism

• Grant number: 24/06940-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate
• Start date: October 01, 2024
• End date: March 31, 2027
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Political Science - Public Policies
• Principal Investigator: Fernando Luiz Abrucio
• Grantee: Gabriel Santana Machado
• Host Institution: Escola de Administração de Empresas de São Paulo (EAESP). Fundação Getúlio Vargas (FGV). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Federative arrangements have different relationships with territorial inequalities, so the federalism literature has different expectations regarding this relationship. However, this literature has addressed these issues in a limited way, neglecting the capabilities of federative arrangements in promoting distributive justice. In the field of political philosophy, distributive justice is studied based on normative theories of justice, and has John Rawls as one of its main exponents and formulator of the theory "justice as fairness", "with a liberal egalitarian character. Given this context, the main objective of this project is to theoretically make John Rawls' theory of justice as fairness compatible with the postulations and foundations of federalism theories on this type of institutional arrangement. From this, we will seek to discuss the foundations of the principle of equitable equality of opportunities and its applicability to federative arrangements to shape what is preliminarily conceptualized in this project as Equitable Federalism. Thus, we seek to normatively conceptualize a federative arrangement model that, in addition to being based on principles of justice, also offers fair parameters regarding the levels of acceptability of inequalities in federations, and the second objective of this project is to measure these parameters for the case Brazilian. Furthermore, given the centrality of public policy financing arrangements for promoting distributive justice in federations, a case study will also be carried out based on educational policy financing arrangements: Fundef, Fundeb and Novo Fundeb. With this, we seek to contribute theoretically to the federalism literature by combining it with a theory of justice, addressing the topic of distributive justice and offering fair parameters for the acceptability of inequalities in federations. In practical terms, the aim is to support the formulation of institutional arrangements that aim to promote distributive justice, especially the financing arrangements for public policies.