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This article, the result of the author's Master's thesis in Administration, presents the analysis of the indicators of outsourcing contracts for the management of public hospitals signed between a State Health Department and private organizations. It is assumed that, considering the incipient evaluation function in Brazilian public administration, the indicators are not consistent to assess whether the performance of the management of outsourced organizations is meeting the objectives that justified the use of outsourcing in essential public services, such as health. It is a qualitative research, which intends to contribute to the discussion about the neoliberal standards established in the Brazilian public administration. The identification of the indicators in the contracts took place through an exploratory documental research and for the analysis of the indicators the Delphi method was used. The results found confirmed the initial assumption.

The article identifies, based on the analysis of the restructuring of the electricity transmission activity in Brazil, apprehended from the neoliberal marketing process, elements that contribute to the understanding of the electricity crisis in Amapá, in 2020. The case expresses the vulnerability to which the transmission service is exposed, provided by concessionaires whose dynamics are linked to global markets, which are increasingly financialized. These aspects could pose challenges to the sectoral regulation exercised by the National Electric Energy Agency (ANEEL). In methodological terms, the interdisciplinary contribution of economic geography, public management, economic law and political economy subsidizes the analysis of sectoral documents, government information, with emphasis on the ANEEL, and published in the press. In addition, based on the transmission contracts, a database was prepared for the analysis of the sectoral configuration, which is consolidated with the restructuring of the transmission activity in Brazil.

In order to understand the present crisis of neoliberal ideology – some symptoms of which could be seen in the Brexit as well as in Trump and Bolsonaro elections –, Nancy Fraser advances a broad analysis of capitalism, encompassing the usual Marxist description, but going beyond it. Her analysis brings forth an important key to evaluate our time: not only neoliberalism, but rather what she calls “progressive neoliberalism” has been the hegemonic ideology of recent decades; and the present crisis is not only of liberalism, but also of the progressive ideology that accompanied it. This is a political analysis far superior to the frequently moralist analyses being done about the rise of right-wing populist leaders. Using these theoretical tools to investigate Brazilian situation may prove helpful to adequately plan future political action.

The development of capitalism in Brazil in the last thirty years was marked by neoliberalism, form assumed by the capitalist mode of production in response to the crisis of the 1970s and others that followed. The determinations that prevail over this form are the same as those identified by Marx for the current mode of production: capital appreciation as development, cyclical crises, downward trend in profit rate and factors that counter this trend. Based on the theory of determinations of capital and documents of Brazilian economy, the objective of this paper is to explain why, among the main factors that counter the fall in profit rate, pointed out by Marx, in Brazil, the increase in labor exploitation and related resources is highlighted in order to counter the trend of falling of profit rate. As consequence, as shown at the end of this work, labor policy has acquired a dominant position in recent years, empirically and legally creating, whether through labor reform or punctual initiatives and expedients, various means to promote a radical increase in labor exploitation.  

This paper aims to understand the institutional arrangement and the state capacities built in an intersectoral, participatory and subnational policy. The paper analyzes the Human Rights Education policy in the city of São Paulo between 2013 and 2016 based on document analysis and interviews. We combine the institutional arrangements model suggested by Lotta and Favareto (2016), which analyzes different dimensions of arrangements, with the model proposed by Pires and Gomide (2016), which proposes two dimensions of state capacities: political-relational and technical-administrative. Our main theoretical contribution is to demonstrate the existence of a direct relationship between political-relational and technical-administrative capacities in the subnational level, based on a combination of elements of horizontal and vertical dimensions of the arrangement.

The objective of this work is to discuss the reforms implemented in Portugal in the last 20 years and appreciate their impact on citizens, because it is often presented as reference but rarely evidenced by its weak impact on the citizen. From the methodological point of view, a qualitative approach was followed: the relevant documentation was surveyed - technical reports and legal texts - and the issues discussed with 30 qualified informants chosen in snowball, indicative sample, were included. This paper argues that the reforms made in Portugal during the last 20 years were reactive, asymmetric and fragmentary reforms, caused by the need to balance their public finances, by mimicry, and the need for legitimacy in the face of external pressure.  

Brazil is a federative country marked by historical economic and social inequalities, despite institutional and political efforts by the central government, remarkably after the redemocratization and the 1988 Constitution. These structural inequalities undergo moments of worsening as a result of critical economic and fiscal situations. The Covid-19 pandemic has brought, since the beginning of 2020, enormous health, social, economic and political challenges for state governments, economically weakened by the recession started in 2014 and by the federal policy of permanent fiscal austerity, constitutionalized by the debt ceiling approved in 2016. This article seeks to show that the fight against Covid-19 during the year 2020 was marked by vertical and horizontal federal incoordination, leading to unequal, insufficient, and inefficient results in federal fiscal aid policies to state governments.

The reformist waves of the Brazilian public administration are not recent phenomena. On the contrary, many modernization efforts have been presented since the bureaucratic reform in the 1930’s, with the proposal of PEC 32/2020. In this article we analyze the contours of PEC 32/2020, highlighting its emphasis on people management policies, and focus on the issue of stability, since the proposal seeks to review labor ties in the public sector, without an in-depth diagnosis of the systemic implications of this change. Finally, we present the contributions of the articles gathered in this special issue, which, seen as a whole, seek to understand to qualify the debates on administrative reform. We wish this Special Issue may contribute to the empirical and theoretical debate around Reforms, beyond the current government's agenda.

This paper assesses the decision-making trends manifested by the Supreme Federal Court in relation to conflicts among federative entities caused or increased by the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. The goal is to assess whether this new scenario has impacted the Court's jurisprudence, which is considered centralist in the analysis of these conflicts, in the sense of favoring the Union in eventual clashes with other federal entities. Therefore, a brief literature review on the national federalist model and the role of the Supreme Federal Court in this scenario was carried out, followed by the analysis of concentrated control actions involving the topic, distributed over a one-year period of the pandemic. The analyzed data reveal that despite some decisions favoring the role of other federative units, no effective change was visualized in decision-making trend by the Supreme Court during the pandemic period.

When facing the question, “Which interventions during pandemics have enabled learning in public policies and which have promoted Mexican intergovernmental cooperation?” six actions have provided outcomes. The Political Communication Strategy, Viral Diagnosis and Direct Territorial Inquiry showed “uncoordinated” setbacks. The main proposal was to seek the ability to implement policy, followed by joint normalization and horizontal management development. Economic Subsidy Programs and Clinical Care showed progress not attributable to federal cooperation. The integrity of national transfers was proposed. Information Processing was the only cooperative advancement, which should be institutionalized in the horizontal organization of governors. The culminating proposal was the reform of the constitutional text to modify the supremacy of the national government in pandemic situations. The method applied was the synthesis of two kinds of documents related with pandemics: official documents, and opinion and political analysis articles.

This article aims to show that the expectation of a robust and effective response to the sanitary and economic damages caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, through the strengthening of the institutional culture of cooperative federalism, was frustrated. The result has been related to the violation of subnational autonomy by the Federal Government, which has obstructed a historical movement of decentralization and cooperative federalism, fostering litigation and preventing the construction of coordinated institutional strategies with shared responsibilities.

The dimension of fiscal federalism is central to the effectiveness of the state's response to the challenges brought by Covid-19. We analyze the federal government's performance in financial aid to sub-national levels through a qualitative and quantitative approach, and argue that the Bolsonaro government presents a conflictive and negative coordination strategy, harming the functioning of cooperative federalism, a pattern that has characterized Brazil since 1988. The Executive's omission made the regional cleavage predominant, and ended up being suboptimal even for the preferences of actors located in the federal government. Thus, the article draws attention to the importance of federal executive choices and objectives, beyond the institutional arrangement, in the functioning of cooperative federalism.

The objective of this paper is to critically analyze Jair Bolsonaro's political leadership in relation to the coordination of actions of other federative entities during the Coronavirus pandemic (Covid-19), based on the directions of Van Dijk's critical discourse analysis. We used the notes of the audiovisual materiality method to work with 15 videos published on the YouTube platform in the official President’s channel. Data were analyzed following the guidelines developed by Van Dijk.  The results suggest that the presidential leadership in coordinating subnational federative entities was an antithesis of what is prescribed in the literature on public leadership. Bolsonaro positioned himself aggressively, constituting a discursive scenario of war against other political leaders of the nation. His posture can be associated with the figure of an anti-leader, an agent who seeks the disaggregation and lack of coordination of actors in favor of his own conceptions.

This article aimed to understand how the federative model contributed to the judicialization of the crisis and influenced the responses to combat the pandemic, as well as the role of the Judiciary in the context of crisis. For this purpose, 931 lawsuits filed in Federal and State Courts were analyzed. The results demonstrate problems of coordination and cooperation between federated entities and the need for constant action by the Judiciary in confronting the pandemic and as a key player in conflicts involving public and private actors. In the end, there was a growing trend in judicial action related to Covid-19, with the extension of restrictive measures, revealing multiple crises from a diversity of agendas recurrently brought to the Judiciary. It is concluded that, despite the identification of Rio Grande do Norte (Potiguar) Judiciary power’s  relevant role with quick responses, health and federative crises cannot be analyzed separately.

The aim of this article is to highlight how Brazilian researchers have approached participatory public policies in recent years, by elaborating some theoretical categorizations of participatory experiences from relevant literature, in order to assess their limits in face of the transitions and dilemmas of the political context, especially with regard to changes in neoliberalism  profile. For such, a brief history of participatory experiences in the scope of public administration and public policies in Brazil is presented in the first section. In the second section, the way Brazilian researchers address the new participatory institutional arrangements and their dynamics in recent years is questioned, based on a non-systematic survey of theoretical articles on the topic published from 1980 to 2020, to present two predominant research strands: analytical and critical. In the third section, the recent conservative turn and the resurgence of neoliberalism, which presents a new face and threat to social participation in Brazil, and its repercussions on the identified research aspects are discussed. In the final remarks, some limits of the article, as well as new questions for discussion and debate are presented.

This text presents analyses and experiences that compose the Forum "Public Policies, Neoliberalism and Democracy" of this ‘Cadernos Gestão Pública e Cidadania’, bringing to the field of public administration/management and public policies consolidated theoretical perspectives in political economy and social sciences on neoliberalism. Based on approaches on neoliberalism anchored in the model of capitalist accumulation and its derivations and the concept of “governmentality” and others, from the work of Foucault, it is argued that, in this historical period of sanitary, economic, social, political and other crises, it is relevant that the production of academic knowledge in public administration considers the interdisciplinary challenge of developing research agendas that articulate conceptual critical categories to neoliberalism with the theoretical framework of administration and public policies. Therefore, we analyze, with different examples, the corrosive role of the neoliberal ethos and predictions to public policies and democracy.

The COVID-19 pandemic is an unprecedented international event. The spread of the coronavirus – the biggest public health crisis in a century and the first of this scale in the globalized modern world – has prompted unparalleled responses by national governments. The proliferation of 24-hours news coverage and social media has allowed people across the world to follow, in real time, the unfolding and visible impacts of the pandemic. In 2020, as governments grappled with fluctuating waves of the COVID-19 pandemic, the effectiveness of public policy varied among federal nations (the paper focuses on countries that are explicitly and constitutionally federal, and countries with governance systems in which governance powers and responsibilities are devolved from the central level to the subnational level). Federal countries such as Australia and Canada managed to keep mortality low, whereas others such as Brazil, Spain and the United States suffered some of the highest numbers of fatalities anywhere around world, both in absolute and relative terms (Kontis et al. 2020, 1919-1928; Brunner et al. 2020; Ritchie et al. 2020)

This special edition aims to analyze the federative crisis in Brazil that was installed in the country in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. The objective was to bring studies and reflections that focus on explaining this crisis, as well as pointing out solutions found by federated entities in light of the problems faced, suggesting perspectives for the study of federalism.

A partir do crescimento do interesse de professores e secretarias de educação na organização de políticas de combate ao racismo, este artigo procura discutir e apresentar alguns subsídios para a implementação das "Diretrizes curriculares nacionais para o ensino das relações étnico-raciais e de história e cultura afro-brasileira e africana", aprovadas em 2004. Entendemos as "Diretrizes" como uma importante estratégia pedagógica para levar à escola, pela primeira vez, a discussão das relações raciais no Brasil, tantas vezes silenciada ou desqualificada pelas avaliações de que o Brasil era uma democracia racial. Demos especial atenção aos limites e possibilidades de trabalho com os conceitos de cultura afro-brasileira e identidade negra.

Este artigo propõe reflexões sobre os desafios que se colocam aos docentes no cenário educacional posterior à Lei nº 10.639/03, que instituiu a obrigatoriedade do ensino de história e cultura afro-brasileira e africana e da educação das relações étnico-raciais na educação básica. Problematizando pressupostos e paradoxos presentes no texto da lei e das diretrizes correlatas, identificam-se os impactos, desafios e desdobramentos teórico-práticos de sua recepção no ensino de história.