DESCENTRALIZATION AND NEW INSTITUTIONAL ARRANGEMENTS PROVIDE MORE AGILITY TO THE LAND REFORM PROCESS: ARE THEY NEW?

Abstract

Land reform is becoming an increasing challenge to the Brazilian State. The search for institutional arrangements able to make more agile and to render effective governamental policies is an underlayable necessity. Descentralization has frequently been thought of as the most adequate alternative. However, to descentralize cannot represent a strategy to negate the responsability on the State. The present study attempts to make explicit, within the government system, the responsabilities of the different spheres of government, to adjust the implementation of the policy to the federative arragement instituted by the Constitution of 1988. It supports the necessity of preserving as a private jurisdiction of the Union, the legal right to expropriate. Strategies of negotiation and agreement are recommended to privide sustainability to the process of implementation of policy.