Policy Analysis and Institutional Change in Developing Countries: The Brazilian Experience

• Published date: 01 March 2015
• Author: Sandro Cabral
• Date: 01 March 2015
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12348

334 Public Administration Review • March | April 2015

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 75, Iss. 2, pp. 334–337. © 2015 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.12348.

Sonia M. Ospina and Rogan Kersh, Editors

Sandro Cabral

Federal University of Bahia, Brazil

Policy Analysis and Institutional Change in Developing

Countries:  e Brazilian Experience

Jeni Vaitsman, José Mendes Ribeiro, and Lenaura

Lobato, eds. , Policy Analysis in Brazil (Bristol:

Policy Press, 2013). 286 pp., $142.50.,

ISBN: 978-1-4473-0684-9.

A fter the transition to democracy in the

mid-1980s, Brazil has experienced several

institutional changes. These included the

introduction of participatory and decentralization

mechanisms that emerged from the 1988 Constitution

and managerial reforms associated with the pursuit for

economic stability, which started in 1994 under the

Real Plan. After 2003, Brazil focused on social policies

and income distribution programs, and reinforced the

role of the internal market to circumvent external tur-

bulences. These changes, and the underlying positive

outcomes, have attracted international attention to the

largest country in Latin America, as Brazil has become

an even more relevant actor onto the global arena. To

a large extent, these changes are influenced by policy

choices designed by a complex set of actors including

political leaders, government bureaucrats, state agen-

cies, NGOs, advocacy groups, multilateral organiza-

tions, and business associations.

In Policy Analysis in Brazil , Jeni Vaitsman, José

Mendes Ribeiro, and Lenaura Lobato have gathered

an impressive amount of evidence about the evolution

of policy analysis in Brazil, and more importantly,

about how the changes described above influenced

policy outcomes in several domains. The editors were

able to attract top scholars from reputed universities

and research centers in Brazil to collaborate and offer

good contributions on the state of the art of policy

analysis in the country. As a public management

scholar, I found it a pleasure to read this book and

learn how scholars are addressing policy analysis issues

in Brazil.

In the introduction, the editors highlight the dif-

ferences between the policy analysis tradition in the

United States and Brazil. In the former, policy analysis

is oriented to policy problem-solving. In Brazil,

according to the editors, policy analysis has a more

academic character and has evolved from the inter-

play among distinct fields such as political science,

public administration, economics, sociology, urban

planning, and social service. This multifaceted origin

may impose some theoretical and empirical constrains

and eventually hamper the dialogue with tradi-

tional policy analysis authors in other regions of the

world. Nevertheless, I believe that the richness of the

Brazilian approach to policy analysis may illuminate

theory building and offer an enhanced understand-

ing of social phenomena in correlated areas of social

science. For instance, in a chapter addressing the

collaborative dynamics of the Brazilian HIV policies

(Chapter 12 by Fonseca and Bastos), we learn of the

relationships developed among several actors involved

in this collaborative arena (NGOs, bureaucrats at vari-

ous governmental levels, multilateral organizations,

researchers). This case is likely to shed some light

on interorganizational collaboration in the public

administration realm (Ansell and Gash 2008 ) engag-

ing a conversation with scholars interested in topics

related to co-production (Bovaird 2007 ), or even in

the reality of service provision to stigmatized groups

(Goffman 1963 ). In the same vein, the interesting

taxonomy Andrews offers in Chapter 3 to character-

ize the methodological diversity of policy analysis in

Brazil uses a simple but worthwhile 2 × 2 matrix that

considers style (economic and sociopolitical) and

scope (macro- and micro-analytical). This taxonomy

can be useful to better understand policy analysis in

other geographical contexts as well.

The book editors present a broad view of policy

analysis in Brazil in 20 invited chapters, structured

in four sections. Contributions in Part 1 address how

policy analysis has been shaped in the country. Part

2 contributors show variations in policymaking at

different levels of government from local to federal.

Contributions in Part 3 draw attention to the inter-

play between politics and policy. And Part 4 explores

the role of expert communities and knowledge

institutions in policy making and analysis. Offering a

Sandro Cabral is associate professor

of operations and strategy at the School

of Management of the Federal University

of Bahia (UFBA). His research focuses on

public–private interactions, organizational

boundaries, and eff‌i ciency of governments.

He was a CAPES-Fulbright Visiting Professor

at NYU-Wagner (2013–14), and he has

published in journals such as

Journal

of Public Administration Research and

Theory , Long Range Planning , Strategic

Entrepreneurship Journal , Public Choice ,

and

Public Money & Management

, among

others.

E-mail : scabral@ufba.br