Dilemmas of federalism: between the 'oligarchic statelism' and the 'democratic regionalism'

Abstract

The article aims to discuss the relation between federalism and regionalism in republican Brazil, focusing in the oscilating movement that sometimes excessively centralizes the power in the federal bureaucracy, and sometimes, on the contrary, gives much power to state government. In both cases, the question about political system representativeness gets blocked, on one hand, by an oligarchical local power pattern, that overwhelms the economic power of land lords, or, on the other hand, because the central Government, serving industrial entrepreneurs, takes out power from the peripheric fractions of dominant classes. The conclusion is that Brazilian federalism must be improved in the sense of better expressing the subaltern cla sses demands, the key to a chieve this cla im being a geopolitical reorganization of the territory.