1. A FAILURE OF PUBLIC MANAGEMENT MODEL IN BRAZIL
Fernando Alcoforado *
During the 1990s, the issue of state reform became central to the Brazilian public
agenda. From the presidency of Fernando Collor, broke out the first steps to reduce the
role of state and make a break with its interventionist past, the typical model of import
substitution industrialization and developmental existing since the government of
Getúlio Vargas in decade 1930 until the military governments from 1964 to 1985. This
reform effort was raised the first government of President Fernando Henrique Cardoso,
who proposed the task of burying the Vargas Era and overcome barriers represented by
the survival of the old order.
With the installation of the Fernando Henrique Cardoso government, the reform of the
State and Public Administration in Brazil gained prominence on the national agenda
since the creation of the Ministry of Federal Administration and State Reform (MARE)
whose proposal addressed the need for the state to limit their comprehensive action
functions as executor or direct provider of services according to neoliberal ideology. In
this new perspective, the state would function mainly by the public policy formulation,
regulation and coordination. Regulatory agencies such as the ANP (National Agency of
Petroleum, Natural Gas and Biofuels), ANEEL (Brazilian Electricity Regulatory
Agency), ANAC (National Agency of Civil Aviation) and others that have emerged
from this process in Brazil.
The proposed reform of the state of the Cardoso government did not eliminate the
bottlenecks of the Brazilian public administration as well as the vices of the past. The
main shortcoming of the reform of the State and Public Administration implemented
under President Fernando Henrique Cardoso resided in fact link it to insertion of Brazil
subordinate to the process of globalization and the neoliberal model and not a national
development strategy. Another important deficiency in the reform of the State and
Public Administration held in the 1990s due to the fact of not having proposed
strategies that would enable the practice to increase efficiency (ability to achieve the
planned objectives and goals with minimal resources and time) and effectiveness
(ability to achieve the expected or desired effect by performing an action) of the state
apparatus in Brazil with conducting a thorough organizational restructuring.
The organizational restructuring is needed in Brazil because the state is inefficient and
ineffective due to lack of integration of federal, state and municipal governments in
promoting national development, regional and local levels. This is one of the main
causes of the debacle administrative public sector in Brazil generator of waste, delays in
execution of works and rampant corruption. "Join this fact the existence of inadequate
organizational structures in each of the federal, state and local effort that prevent these
integrative levels of government. The lack of integration of the various levels of the
state is therefore total, making the action of government becomes chaotic as a whole,
generating therefore diseconomies of every kind" (ALCOFORADO, Fernando. De
Collor a FHC- O Brasil e a nova (des)ordem mundial, Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 1998).
The organizational structures of government at all levels in Brazil are outdated. It is
unacceptable that the structures of federal, state and municipal agencies have
unnecessary and over-staffed and superimposed efforts as still happens today in many
sectors, to deplete the scarce resources available to them. To solve this problem, it
would be necessary to make the federal and state governments only assume regulatory
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2. functions and planning global, regional and sectoral bases built in, while the municipal
governments, regional development agencies and state enterprises would also the
executive part of fashion articulated.
Compete, so the municipalities, the regional development agencies and state enterprises
a great responsibility to perform all development plans global, regional, state, local and
industry jointly prepared by various government bodies after listening to their
parliaments federal, state and local, as well as civil society. This model of integrated
management of the public sector in Brazil oppose to what prevails today, in which
federal, state and municipal governments are autonomous in their decisions and actions,
and politically responsive to the idea of integration.
Rethinking state reform also requires a break with the dominant paradigm that still
favors the role of technocrats in government management rather than the manifestation
of civil society sectors. It is not sufficient largest concentration of technical power, as
occurs today. It´s necessary take into account the political dimension of state reform,
including the participation of Civil Society sectors through public hearings, referendums
and plebiscites in making decisions about the most relevant issues. The emphasis on
policy requires fundamentally strengthening the connections between the state and
society and representative institutions also expanding recovery procedures and
accountability, the external means of social control, transparency and publicity of
government action.
Unlike the State Reform and Public Administration implemented under President
Fernando Henrique Cardoso had as main objective the inclusion of Brazil to the
globalization process based neoliberal model, which was maintained by Lula and Dilma
Rousseff governments, urge the realization a new reform in Brazil that works to
promote the development of the Country on new foundations diametrically opposed to
what currently prevails. We conclude, therefore, that current models of management of
municipalities, federal states and Brazil are entirely outdated because federal, state and
municipal act in isolation from each other and disjointed. The main consequence of this
management model is the lack of coordination in government action at all levels with
much duplication and waste of resources of all kinds.
It follows, too, that, nationally, Brazil should be administered with federal structures
implanted by region through which coordinate the actions of states in regional planning
and actions to be performed with the participation of Productive Sectors and Civil
Society. The same philosophy should be considered at the state level where each state of
the federation would structures by region through which coordinate the actions of
municipalities in each region planning and actions to be performed. To make a change
of this magnitude in the models of management of federal, state and local, is necessary,
however, make a reform of the Constitution.
One clear finding is that the various regions of the state of Bahia grow in a disorganized
way, unplanned and uncoordinated institutional. The lack of integration between
municipalities is indisputably not existing among the cities that form part share in
municipal management. Each municipality operates without coordination with other
municipalities generating diseconomies of all kinds. In the specific case of the state of
Bahia, the RMS (Metropolitan Region of Salvador), for example, would be one of the
areas where the state government would coordinate the actions of their municipalities in
their planning and actions to be performed. The RMS, with 3,866,004 people, is the
most populous metropolitan area and the fifth of the Brazilian Northeast of Brazil.
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3. The RMS comprises the municipalities of Camaçari, Candeias, Dias d´Ávila, Itaparica,
Lauro de Freitas, Madre de Deus, Mata de São João, Pojuca, Salvador, São Francisco do
Conde, São Sebastião do Passé, Simões Filho and Vera Cruz. The Metropolitan Region
of Salvador has no common management tools to solve problems that affect its
inhabitants, for example, the economic system, the transportation system and disposal
of solid and liquid waste, among others. The management of Salvador, for example,
should be considered in the context of the management of RMS that should be shared
by all municipalities of its members. The management of RMS will be effective only if
it consists of a network organization involving all municipalities which its members and
associations representing various segments of the community.
* Alcoforado, Fernando, engineer and doctor of Territorial Planning and Regional Development from the
University of Barcelona, a university professor and consultant in strategic planning, business planning,
regional planning and planning of energy systems, is the author of Globalização (Editora Nobel, São
Paulo, 1997), De Collor a FHC- O Brasil e a Nova (Des)ordem Mundial (Editora Nobel, São Paulo,
1998), Um Projeto para o Brasil (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 2000), Os condicionantes do
desenvolvimento do Estado da Bahia (Tese de doutorado. Universidade de Barcelona,
http://www.tesisenred.net/handle/10803/1944, 2003), Globalização e Desenvolvimento (Editora Nobel,
São Paulo, 2006), Bahia- Desenvolvimento do Século XVI ao Século XX e Objetivos Estratégicos na Era
Contemporânea (EGBA, Salvador, 2008), The Necessary Conditions of the Economic and Social
Development-The Case of the State of Bahia (VDM Verlag Dr. Muller Aktiengesellschaft & Co. KG,
Saarbrücken, Germany, 2010), Aquecimento Global e Catástrofe Planetária (P&A Gráfica e Editora,
Salvador, 2010), Amazônia Sustentável- Para o progresso do Brasil e combate ao aquecimento global
(Viena- Editora e Gráfica, Santa Cruz do Rio Pardo, São Paulo, 2011) and Os Fatores Condicionantes do
Desenvolvimento Econômico e Social (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2012), among others.
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