Análise do ICMS esportivo na descentralização de recursos e no desenvolvimento das políticas de esporte e lazer em Minas Gerais

Abstract

This research analyzed the ICMS Esportivo, an intergovernmental fiscal transfer policy in Minas Gerais, over its first eleven years of implementation (2011–2021). The study stems from a concern about how municipalities—especially small ones—finance sport and leisure policies when these rights are constitutionally recognized but lack robust national coordination, a dedicated public fund, and structural mechanisms to reduce territorial inequalities. In a context of federal asymmetries, municipalization tends to shift responsibilities toward subnational governments with lower fiscal, administrative, and technical capacity. The central thesis advanced here is that the ICMS Esportivo, although embedded in a broader redistributive framework (the ICMS Solidário), operates primarily as a competitive inducement mechanism with low fiscal capacity, whose institutional design tends to reproduce inequalities in municipal state capacity. The general objective was to analyze the ICMS Esportivo as an intergovernmental transfer policy in Minas Gerais, examining its institutional design, its mechanisms of inducement and redistribution, and its effects on the organization, financing, and implementation of municipal sport and leisure policies. Specifically, the research investigated the normative trajectory of state sport and leisure policies, the legal structure and scoring criteria of the ICMS Esportivo, and its materialization across municipalities in relation to socioeconomic and institutional characteristics. Methodologically, the study adopted a mixed-methods, exploratory-descriptive approach grounded in rational choice neo-institutionalism, understanding institutions as structures that shape incentives and influence local policymakers’ decisions. The investigation was organized around three analytical axes: (1) assessing Minas Gerais’ state capacity in the sport and leisure policy domain; (2) conducting a documentary analysis of the normative framework of the ICMS Esportivo within the ICMS Solidário; and (3) characterizing municipal participation and financial transfers across all 853 municipalities between 2011 and 2021 through descriptive and inferential statistical analyses (Pearson correlation and multiple linear regression), using variables such as population, public spending on sport and leisure, HDI, Gini Index, GDP per capita, and Net Current Revenue per capita. The findings highlight five core results: (1) sport and leisure occupy a fragile position within the federal pact, particularly in small municipalities that are highly dependent on intergovernmental transfers; (2) the ICMS Esportivo displays low overall fiscal relevance, functioning more as a normative signal than as an instrument capable of sustaining structurally robust public policies; (3) participation expanded alongside incentive dilution—the number of eligible municipalities quadrupled while total resources merely doubled, reducing average returns per municipality and disadvantaging governments with weaker institutional capacity; (4) participation is widespread but uneven across regions and population sizes—mid-sized municipalities tend to engage more actively, while small municipalities face technical and bureaucratic constraints, and large municipalities often perceive the marginal fiscal benefit as insufficient relative to administrative costs; and (5) inferential analyses indicate that the ICMS Esportivo does not primarily allocate resources to those “most in need,” but rather to those with greater capacity to comply with institutional rules. The study concludes that the ICMS Esportivo combines institutional inducement with limited fiscal strength, producing contradictory effects on the democratization of access to sport and leisure rights. In a system of fiscal federalism marked by historical asymmetries, the realization of social rights through intermunicipal competition tends to reinforce, rather than mitigate, inequality.