Public management policy change in Brazil : 1995-1998

Abstract

The paper focuses on public management policy change in Brazil during the first mandate of President Cardoso. It adopts a narrative mode to explain the process of policy change. It is centered on the main events of the period 1995-1998 relevant to the episode. The events refer to actions and activities relevant to clarify the policy cycle. Analytical categories of the multiple streams theoretical framework are used to dissect the policy change process. The selected events belong to the three streams of his model: politics, problem and policy. The narrative gravitates around the issue career within the processes of agenda setting, alternative specification and decision-making.

Special attention is focused on the role played by a policy entrepreneur: the Ministry of Administration and State Reform Bresser Pereira. Institutional and non-institutional factors are mentioned when they help to understand and explain the episode. On the first case topics like the relationship between the executive and the legislative, organizationsï mandates, constitutional provisions, governmental dynamics are identified and linked to the central subject of the episode. On the second case topics like economic shocks, politics dynamics and personal idiosyncrasies are explored when they play a relevant in the episode.

The episode is narrated in a framework capable of allowing comparisons with other cases, according to a methodology designed specifically with this purpose. In doing so the author expects to contribute to enrich a research agenda related with public management policy change in emerging countries that do not belong to the usual cases of public management reforms of the international literature.