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In this article, we focus on how children and youths are treated by Guardianship Councils. The Guardianship Council (CT) is one of the most important institutional tools for implementing the system of guarantees of children’s and adolescents’ rights. Our general goal is to analyze, according to the perception of guardianship councilors in Montes Claros, in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais, how the agency operates in this municipality. To that end, we conducted a qualitative study to understand the meanings perceived by the actors involved. We interviewed five of the eight councilors in the city of Montes Claros. We found that, in the case under analysis, a notorious lack of conditions leads to situations of "tragic choices": for every child in a "priority" situation who is quickly helped, some other children in non-priority situations remain subjected to risk, the effects of which are unpredictable in the long run. Priority cases are subjectively defined because of a system that imposes on the counselor the paradox to, as a government agent, feel able to intervene with some situations, and unable to help in other cases of extreme vulnerability. To some extent, this situation creates in the councilor the perception that it is up to him to decide "which life to save".

Innovation in services has gained space and several authors view it as a driver of organization development, thanks to the growth of the sector’s importance in the world economy. The present article proposes an analytical construct in which barriers and facilitators are antecedents of innovation, playing a significant role in its adoption in the public sector. It also shows a positive relationship between antecedents and type of innovation. For this study, we obtained literature-based variables through content analysis of 286 reports of innovation experiments from the Innovation Competition in Federal Public Management, which was promoted by ENAP. We used logistic regression to conduct a posteriori statistical analysis and found a significant relationship between innovation barriers and facilitators and the type of innovation adopted.

The present study aimed to analyze what has been discussed about social participation since the enactment of Brazil’s 1988 Federal Constitution, as well as to identify the main authors who have dedicated themselves to study the subject, the institutions and areas this participation has been discussed at, and the methodological profile adopted in publications. To that end, we reflected on the different denominations given to participation, as well as on the trajectory of research agenda over the last two decades. Our methodological procedures were meta-study and content analysis. We found that studies on social participation increased since 2003 and that there is a concentration of research in the health area. We also found that the main researchers discussing the subject are members of the Federal University of Viçosa. Finally, we verified that a thematic plurality pervades the subject, which contributes to different methodological profiles.

The scenario of public funding changed in 2015, when expenditure amendments to the budget bill by individual congress members had their execution made mandatory. Thus, it is reasonable to expect that the allocation of these amendments will need to be managed, with a view to aligning them with public policies. In this exploratory article, we selected the context of health care because of the potential impact of this change on this field. We analyzed to what extent congress members’ expenditure amendments to the Unified Health Care System (SUS) between 2012 and 2015 were in line with the system's agenda and how this indicates alignments between the executive and legislative branches. Quantitative and qualitative analyses were conducted to determine whether mandatory amendments contribute to strengthen the funding of health care policy and to achieve the goals of its agenda.

The provision of water in the municipality of São Paulo depends on a system of reservoirs, of which two are particularly important: Cantareira, located in the north, and Guarapiranga-Billings, in the southern part of the city. Preservation of the headwaters of both systems is at present in conflict with the urgent need for housing, especially in the case of poorer sectors of the population that depend on informal settlements or social housing systems. This article derives from research carried out in the region where the headwaters of the Guarapiranga reservoir are located. It has a double aim. On one hand, it traces how environmental protection of the reservoir area has become a governmental issue; on the other hand, based on interviews and ethnographic approaches, it aims to discuss how environmental protection issues are dealt with on a day-to-day basis.

The article discusses innovative mechanisms of democratic participation arising from Brazilian public policy that articulate relations between government, the private sector, and civil society on questions of territorial development. It focuses on the possibilities and limitations for democratic rearrangements of public spaces and the creation of new participatory tools and languages of public action for the promotion of public policy. The discussion is based on the experience of the city of Belo Horizonte’s regionalization led by the municipal government in 2011, in which, the city was divided into 40 areas called “Shared Management Territories.” The process, guidelines, and methods are described, and the different cases of dispute, conflict, and cooperation are analyzed to understand the languages of social action and the effects of territorial logic; these work in the construction of spaces and tools, enabling actors to enlarge their political participation, demand, and propose adjustments to public policy.

The paper starts from the observation made by authors involved with different aspects of public action, that the State is not synonymous with public affairs. Given a more polycentric approach in which the public, or publics, are themselves key and independent social actors, amongst others, it questions the central role that public policy is assumed to take in articulating the discussion and provision of public goods and services. The paper takes a historical perspective on the emergence of policy at different moments in the English language and looks in more detail at three periods which are widely recognized as moments when English speaking democracies made significant steps forward in broadening the agenda of public affairs: Roosevelt’s New Deal, 1933; the 1945 British Labour Government; and the Johnson administrations (1963-1968). In all of these cases, there were very practical breakthroughs, with new approaches to some very difficult issues but with very little, if at all, discussion of policy. Given that action and talk go together, what other social languages (to use Bakhtin’s term, 1986) were available? In pointing out that these were many and most continue to be present and highly active today, the paper questions the centrality and inevitability of public policy and concludes by arguing for a public action languages approach to the study of public affairs.

While there is not much research on membership management – how associations recruit, engage and maintain members – the subject is very relevant to association managers. The goal of this research is to understand how Brazilian associations carry out membership management and how these management practices can vary depending on membership type, i.e., individual (APJ) or organizational (APJ). We developed a survey with questions about the profile of the association and its membership management practices, and obtained 99 valid responses – 42 APFs and 57 APJs. Main findings include that the difference in membership management practices between individual-based organizations and meta-organizations is smaller than the literature led to infer. The survey also revealed the predominance of uncompetitive governance, based on the “single ticket democracy” model, thus challenging the validity of the idea of associations as “democracy schools”.

Between 1969 and 1987, UNESCO published a series of 77 monographs on aspects related to cultural policies of individual countries. Each monograph mobilized cultural policy in very particular ways, by its association with local issues, increasing awareness and communication about issues that formerly had never been grouped together under this label. Based on primary documents concerning the monographs, in this article I show that their production involved the articulation of a network of narratives, repertoires, documents, and publics that contributed to the development of a language of cultural policy, which became a frequent way to talk about and perform public actions related to culture in different places around the globe.

Based on the premise that the Brazilian state recognizes the right to health care as a citizenship guarantee, the present article analyses the Brazilian Popular Pharmacy Program, implemented in 2004, as a public policy for access to medicines. The program was analyzed by means of documentary and bibliographic research, as well as interviews conducted with program stakeholders, in order to identify its scope and limitations. Aiming at the distribution of essential medicines for the treatment of non-communicable chronic diseases, the program showed advantages regarding its efficient logistics, which ensures medicine availability and easy access to contracted private pharmacies. However, we found that public healthcare system users, who should be using conventional public pharmaceutical assistance, which distributes free medicines to the population, needed another form of assistance, due to the deficiencies of that service. Although the program was considered important as an alternative, operational and strategic improvements are suggested to make it more effective in providing access to medicines for the Brazilian population.

In the last 30 years, no Brazilian president has had a majority of congress members in the party that elected him/her. In order to have support in the legislature, their strategy has been to form a government coalition with other parties. The literature indicates that the main currency used by presidents is the distribution of ministries, and that this division is proportional to the number of members of each party in the coalition. The presupposition to this theme is that proportional parliaments would be more satisfied, and would therefore act in a more regulated manner because of their sense of justice. The main indicator used to measure the distribution of ministries is the Coalescence Rate. This paper argues that this index has no statistical consistency, and suggests an alternative concentration indicator: the G. Index.

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This article aims to describe the performance evaluation process of public servants in federal regulatory agencies called 360-degree feedback, from the perspective of adjusting this process to the context of the federal executive power. We employed a documentary research design in which we collected primary data using the Electronic System of the Citizen Information Service (e-SIC). The analysis of data resulted from a comparison between the existing literature and the particularities of the adjustment in the instrument to the object of study. Results indicate that such adjustment is characterized by focus on monitoring to achieve goals and results, rather than prioritizing the career development of the employees evaluated. This brings the process closer to characteristics of traditional performance evaluation methods than to the innovative features of 360-degree feedback.

Public Ombudsman’s Offices are organizations that act as interlocutors between citizens and public agencies. They are normally used when citizens need to make a complain, a suggestion or to request information. In Brazil, they became popular in the late 1990’s, boosted by the managerial movement in public administration. According to data from the Office of the Ombudsman General (OGU), in 2014 there were 285 Public Ombudsmen linked to the federal executive branch. However, despite its expansion and relevance, there is scarce research on this field, particularly with citizens as research subjects. Therefore, our purpose in the present study was to investigate citizens’ knowledge about the Office of the Public Ombudsman, as well its image as perceived by them. To that end, we conducted a survey with 400 people in central Florianópolis, SC. Among respondents, 71% said they did not know what a Public Ombudsman was. In the analysis procedure, the chi-square test confirmed the presence of statistically significant differences, particularly regarding professional occupation and knowledge about Public Ombudsman’s existence. For those who knew the Public Ombudsman's Office, it was mainly associated to the terms "complaint" and "listening to the citizen". We found a predominance of neutral and positive associations to the Public Ombudsman’s image, showing a good reputation. Among its possible contributions is easy contact with public agencies, improvement in public service quality and ease in demanding rights.

The hospital care provided by Brazil’s Unified Health System (SUS) faces a challenge: to increase efficiency. In order to examine the situation of hospitals forming SUS’ public-private mix in the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso, this article compared the efficiency of 10 hospitals, including public, private and philanthropic institutions, using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), a method that works with multiple inputs and outputs. In this method, the efficiency rate considers the mix of inputs and outputs, being more comprehensive and reliable than a set of operating or profitability indices, and it is applicable to various types of public and nonprofit organizations. The present work is a descriptive and exploratory multicase study with a quantitative approach. We selected 10 public, private or philanthropic hospitals in three health regions in the state of Mato Grosso. This allowed comparing the efficiency found in the three hospital categories. In 2011, the philanthropic (1) and private hospitals (0.96) presented better efficiency scores than the public ones (0.84). The same occurred in the first half of 2012, when the private (0.95) and philanthropic (0.92) hospitals swapped positions but continued to perform better than the public ones (0.81). In both periods, the public hospitals had the lowest total efficiency level. Thus, in this model of DEA analysis applied to all hospitals surveyed, the private and philanthropic hospitals had a higher efficiency level than the public hospitals, which we discuss in the article.

Municipal health councils, instances of civic participation in the management of the Unified Health System (SUS), were created by Law No. 8,142 of December 28, 1990. The spaces for popular participation in the public agenda are thus settled, specifically in Health, conferring differentiated character to the municipal management, which is assumed as social control. In this context and through the role and responsibilities attributed to the councils, this paper has the proposal to analyze the exercise of social control by the municipal health council in the city of Juiz de Fora. For that, a literature review was carried out in order to base this research and to assist in data processing. Regarding methodological procedures, this qualitative study used as data collection techniques semi-structured interviews, documentary research and non-participant observation, and the data were analyzed based on content analysis. The analyzes suggest incompleteness in the autonomy of the council, when traits of heteronomy are identified.

This study addresses the challenge facing Brazilian public servants to keep up to date with the complex, growing framework of legal and normative documents, so as to conduct effective analyzes and issue opinions in government agencies. Using the Policy Delphi technique, we discuss the exaptation of the scholarly citation and reference management approach to the context of analyzes and issuing of opinions in government agencies. Through Policy Delphi’s iteration cycles with Brazilian public management experts, we analyze the possible sources of resistance to the adoption of this approach, as well as policies that can inhibit or reduce it.

This paper discusses the assessment of educational policies, particularly teacher bonus pay in public education policy. We analyze the assessment of the policy implemented in the City of New York and draw a parallel with the Brazilian situation concerning the assessment of this kind of policy. Based on the literature on public policy evaluation and using documentary analysis for the New York experience and the situation in Brazil, this paper presents the evaluative experiment in New York, identifying and analyzing its design and purpose and the use of information from the process as a resource for government decision making. In addition, we show that in Brazil the assessment of this policy requires greater support of policy makers so that assessment results can be used in policy planning and improvement.

The present article analyzes the role of government actors, i.e., high-ranking officials, government leaders and bureaucracy, in implementing direct procurement from family agriculture for school meals in the municipality of São Bernardo do Campo, SP, Brazil, which met the allocation target of 100% of the funds provided by the National Education Development Fund (FNDE) for farmers' cooperatives. The analysis of the experience is based on its implementation period (2009 to 2012), and can be characterized as qualitative and field research. The text presents a theoretical discussion about the role of actors in the implementation of public policies, followed by a contextualization of the experience in São Bernardo do Campo and an analysis of the role of actors in its implementation. The article concludes that the implementation team’s discretionary and politically oriented action was fundamental to meet national guidelines.

The present study aims to understand how the microcredit program implemented in Cidade de Deus sought is contributing to reduce poverty in the segment of the population excluded by the traditional banking sector. To this end, two aspects are highlighted: one with a social aspect – the search by the poor population for microcredit; and another one – economic-oriented addressing the financial self-sustainability of the program. Semi-structured interviews were carried out with local micro-entrepreneurs, representatives of financial institutions and other entities, which provide credit in the community. The results obtained show that there are still barriers that hinder access of the poor to microcredit resources and that the institutions’ financial sustainability have guided the decisions on the beneficiaries of these resources.