A descentralização político-administrativa no contexto de um Estado unitário: uma análise a partir de Moçambique (1998 -2018)

Abstract

This thesis comes about with the objective of analyzing the challenges that political- administrative decentralization represents in the context of the Mozambican unitary state,

exploring the specific case of the municipalities of the Maputo and Beira cities, in the period between 1998 and 2018. The central argument that guides this thesis is that the processes of decentralization and deconcentration in Mozambique must be seen within a triple framework of limits and constraints: (i) the marked political centralism of the Mozambique Liberation Front (FRELIMO), based on colonial habitus, militarism of independence struggles and socialist leadership; (ii) the use (or simple threat) of violence by RENAMO (National Resistance of Mozambique), which never abandoned weapons and the warrior culture of the times of the struggle for decolonization; (iii) the pressure from international donors - who were already operating in Mozambique - in the post-Cold War world, based on ideals of liberal representative democracy. In disagreement with the formal precepts of the processes of decentralization and deconcentration, this thesis shows, from the case studies in question, relationship and articulation problems between the representations of the central government in the local and the municipalities, which compete with one other in badly defined competences, and often overlapping. Far from guaranteeing the participation of citizens in solving problems of local interest, the recourse, albeit precarious, of discourses and practices of decentralization and deconcentration had and have the benefit of redistributing local power and, thus, resolving impulses of violent conflict between FRELIMO and RENAMO. Such processes represent, at the same time, a balance point for the reproduction of FRELIMO's hegemonic power, and also a set of gaps in the centralist political chess that allow some (although incipient and unstable) diversification of actors in the spheres of power. The thesis was developed from a qualitative and multidisciplinary approach from political history to legal analysis and mobilizes extensive secondary bibliography, official documents and unpublished interviews with key actors in the political process under observation.