Christina W. Andrews

O discurso da nova administração pública

O artigo faz uma analise critica da estrategia de reforma do Estado defendida, no artigo publicado nesta edicao de Lua Nova, por Luiz Carlos Bresser Pereira.

NAMING THE ROSE

This paper presents an analysis of the official discourse of Brazilian administrative reform, scrutinizing the consistency of its key theoretical and political arguments. Identifying Brazilian reform as being strongly inspired by New Public Management (NPM) prescriptions, the authors discuss the characteristics of this model in its Brazilian version. The analysis reveals that New Public Management prescriptions in the Brazilian context are propagated alongside an ideological discourse aimed at disguising its conservative agenda. In addition, the authors criticize the discourse on government reform as adhering to the post-modern fallacy regarding the dismissal of ideology and the “neutrality” of NPM prescriptions.

revisiting guerreiro ramos' THE NEW Science of Organizations Through habermasian lenses: a critical tribute

Abstract Adopting the work of Jiirgen Habermas as a critical reference, this paper examines the ideas exposed in the The New Science of Organizations, the last and most important work of Alberto Guerreiro Ramos, the renowned Brazilian Public Administration scholar. Guerreiro Ramos’ organizational theory has much in common with the ideas of critical theorists from the Frankfurt School, including Habermas. However, as is discussed in the paper, Guerreiro Ramos’ attachment to transcendental phenomenology and to the concept of substantive reason imposes fatal limitations to his critical theoretical project. It is argued that Habermas’ philosophical standpoint overcomes the theoretical limitations that emerge from the philosophy of consciousness. Finally, the paper suggests that Habermas’s critical theory—for reaching beyond New Public Management positivism and Postmodern skepticism—offers a feasible alternative for research in Public Administration..

Anti-Poverty Policies in Brazil: Reviewing the Past Ten Years

This article reviews the main anti-poverty policies implemented in Brazil from the early 1990s to the early 2000s. These include focused and universal policies — such as education and health care — as well as the rural development, a ‘middle ground’ policy. Though the inter-municipal consortium, a new institutional arrangement gathering municipalities together, has emerged as a promising policy implementation tool, anti-poverty policies have faced implementation difficulties. Lack of coordination between different programs, even within the same policy area, has impaired their effectiveness. As a consequence, compensatory programs, based on monetary transfers to poor families, which face fewer implementation problems, have become the dominant type of anti-poverty policies in Brazil. Despite these shortcomings, a small Brazilian state, Santa Catarina, was able to reduce by 46 percent the number of individuals living in poverty in just ten years. This is a sign that fighting poverty can, after all, be a feasible endeavor.

Continuities and change in Brazilian administrative reform

This paper analyses the strengths and weaknesses of the 1995 administrative reform proposal announced by the Brazilian government. The reform proposal, described in the Directive Plan on the Reform of the Governmental Apparatus – a document publicly released by the Brazilian authorities – argues that the need for reform springs from a “crisis of the state”, involving three aspects: a fiscal crisis resulting from the incapacity of the government to face current public services costs; the collapse of interventionist governments within a global economy; and the failure of the bureaucratic model in the delivery of public services. Adopting the theoretical reform strategy framework developed by Matus in 1996, this paper focuses on eight aspects of the reform in discussing strengths and weaknesses. Finally, the paper discusses the similarities of the reform proposal to the administrative reform undertaken by the Brazilian government in 1967, the effects of the current political environment on the reform proposal and the role of administrative reform in governmental policies. The overall conclusion is that, in addition to the lack of a clear implementation strategy, the administrative reform proposal over‐emphasizes the solving of the fiscal crisis and ignores the role of reform in addressing problems of inequality. Consequently, the reform may lack purpose if it is not strategically connected to wider and encompassing policies aimed at ameliorating acute social problems.