Da gestão à paradiplomacia em tempos de COVID-19: caso concreto do estado do Maranhão - Brasil

Abstract

Faced with the scenario of a pandemic, the role of the national state ends up giving way to the international action of subnational entities. Despite the legal-political conformation outlined by the Brazilian federalism model and in the search for alternatives and mitigation of the effects of the disease caused by SARS-CoV-2, in the light of the constitutional provisions guaranteeing life and health, states and municipalities become the operational arms of the State, legitimized by the Federal Supreme Court (STF) and by infra-constitutional legislation. The paradiplomatic phenomenon, or direct diplomacy, became evident during the period of the Covid-19 pandemic, as the health area demanded its urgent applicability. From the guiding objectives of the research, an approach to the paradiplomatic phenomenon was sought, from the transformations generated in the world order and in the behavior of subnational actors in the face of new governance standards and the public health emergency at a global level, that is, the real legal possibilities in the use of paradiplomacy, especially when used as an administrative tool in government decisions and complement to the policy of cooperation networks. The work is based on a descriptive-analytical case study on the acquisition, in the international market, of respirators (lung ventilators) by the Brazilian state of Maranhão, in the year 2020, in a context of a pandemic, in the absence of the Federal Government and at a time when the activity of international trade was undergoing fierce competition for medical supplies and equipment, whose main object of study is the paradiplomacy used by the subnational entity as a mechanism for resolving national disputes in the framework of international insertion and articulation.