State governments in confronting Covid-19: a new protagonism in Brazilian federalism?

Abstract

The Federal Constitution of 1988 established a model of cooperative federalism seeking to create institutional bases to functionally articulate the performance of the federal government, states, and cities in the construction of such strategies, especially in critical situations that demand a response from the expressive mobilization of resources, actors, and institutions. The objective of this article is to present an analysis of the evolution of the actions developed by the governors of eleven Brazilian states to face the Covid-19 pandemic, seeking to identify the tendency of their actions in face of the pressures generated in the dynamics of intergovernmental relations. A total of 701 decrees published from February to October 2020, considered the first wave of the pandemic, were organised and analysed based on three axes: measures to improve health policies and services; employment and income protection policies; administrative and social regulation measures and territorial management.