ABSTRACT
Brazil was swimming against the centralizing tide when the constitution of 1891, following a coup detat creating a Republican regime two years earlier, granted sweeping fiscal and financial powers to the units of the federation. Federalism should be distinguished from regionalism, a pattern of political behavior intimately associated with it. This chapter explores a system of government in which matters of national concern are reserved to the central authority –enforcement of the constitution and federal law, currency regulation and control of foreign policy. Regionalism, by contrast, is a pattern of political behavior characteristic of a federal regime. The federal constitution approved by the constituent assembly on 24 February 1891 fulfilled the promise of decentralization stressed in the Republican motto of 1870 –"Centralization, Dismemberment; Decentralization, Unity". The chapter concludes with a consideration of developments at the end of the period under review, comparing the federal regimes of the years 1889-1937 with the Estado Novo and the contemporaneous regime in Mexico.
