Public policies in contemporary contexts: national and international Tendencies*

Abstract

Public policies in contemporary contexts: national and international Tendencies * (Menicucci, Telma Maria Goncalves and Gontijo, Jose Geraldo Leandro. Gestao e Politicas Publicas no Cenario Contemporaneo: Tendencias Nacionais e Internacionais. Rio de Janeiro: FIOCRUZ, 2016)Organizing an edited volume is an intellectual endeavor that, when wellexecuted, results in a rich collection of perspectives, interpretations and contributions about a given subject, offering the reader valuable material for broadening their knowledge. This is the case for 'Gestao e Politicas Publicas no Cenario Contemporaneo' (Management and Public Policies in a Contemporary Context), organized by Telma Menicucci and Jose Geraldo Gontijo. It brings together articles by specialists and researchers from different teaching and research institutions in Brazil and abroad with experience in areas such as political science, public policy, public administration, sociology, and urban planning, among others. Throughout the 17 chapters, organized in five thematic sections, the authors introduce different frameworks, methodologies and perspectives, supplying the reader with a diversified overview of management and contemporary public policy.The first part of the edited volume brings together four chapters that look at the theoretical and empirical dimensions of governance, emphasizing different aspects of state performance and their interaction with society in the contemporary production of public policies. Jon Pierre's chapter highlights what he considers to be one of today's biggest paradoxes: the reduction of state capacity at the exact moment when society is becoming more complex. The argument developed by Pierre is that political leadership consists of an essential element for re-articulating the role of the government and reestablishing state capacity.Next, Volker Schneider investigates another aspect of governance: the distribution of power in public policy networks. Analyzing environmental policy networks in Germany, he examines the 'post-democracy' thesis, according to which advanced democracies should be in decline. His study reveals changes in the power structure of environmental policy networks, but in the opposite direction to that which would be expected by a 'post-democratic' perspective. This points to a more equitable distribution of power in more recent years.The conceptual debate about governance is next used by Eduardo Marques as the base for his study about urban public policies in Brazil. He introduces the debate about governance in Latin America and problematizes some associations that are commonly found in the literature. Investigating the case of Sao Paulo, he identifies distinct patterns of governance that vary depending on the actors participating, the structure of the decision-making process, and the degree of insulation of the state, among other elements. This contributes to the operationalization of the concept of governance in city-oriented public policy.The theoretical discussion about governance is taken up again by Roberto Pires and Alexandre Gomide, who examine the dimension of state capacity by looking at institutional arrangements for the implementation of public policies. Such a theoretical reflection sustains the empirical analysis about the recent experience of the Brazilian government. Pires and Gomide identify similarities between these programs, such as the formation of a complex network of actors during the implementation process, with an emphasis on the participation of state-owned enterprises and public banks and their interactions with the private sector. They also verify distinct aspects related to the participation of federal entities in the arrangements, openness to social participation, and intra-governmental centralization. Such findings help characterize the model of governance present in the federal government's arrangements of implementation, and contributes to studies about governance and state capacity in Brazil. …