PAD6836 Lecture 5

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University of North Florida

Master of Public Administration program

Course syllabus

PAD 6836 Comparative public administration

Administrative reform (through administrative reform!) Comparative public manager of the week

source

Luiz Carlos Bresser Pereira

Brazilian exceptionalism

While on Bresser Pereira, as indicated last week he is interesting for me for a number of reasons:

He was the Minister for State Reform in the reformist Social Democratic Cardoso

government.

He is a prominent academic

economist.

As a result, he provides a

perspective that is unusual

in the Anglophone social

scientist literature, and

that he is all but unknown

in the US says a lot about

the ‘cultural colonialism’

that characterizes global

thinking.

I’ve already mentioned that the

US is, according to well

respected data produced by

conservative, small-guv’mint-

advocatin’ US thinktanks, a

relatively lightly governed

country. So less government

and less regulation seems a

hard sell, as blanket ideological

preference guiding policy. Brazil is useful for our purposes because it is the opposite: a

relatively heavily governed country. The evidence for this is provided in Figure 1. Note the

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trend line through the data, showing the relationship between income and size of government.

This is positive, due to the mutually reinforcing tendency for improved government services

(infrastructure, public education, security of property, etc.) to contribute to faster wealth

accumulation; while when countries become richer they opt for various ‘amenity’ public goods,

like breathable air, swimmable rivers, and drinkable water (click for a discussion).

So the richer countries get, the more government they have (within reason, as we have already

discussed, with Sweden as our limiting extreme). That trend line shows the average relationship.

Countries below it have less government than you’d expect, given their level of development,

while those above the line have more government than you’d expect, given their level of

development. Note the US below the line, and Brazil and Canada above the line.1

Remember, too, Table 4 from last week’s lecture: big government (so long as it doesn’t get too

big, and get into areas government doesn’t do well), can be fine, so long as it is accountable and

effective. But the worst of all possible worlds is a relatively big, unaccountable and ineffective

system of government: Brazil.

The ‘pre-modern’ paradigm. In

my MPA classes I share my way

of trying to provide structure to an

otherwise complicated field by

identifying the paradigms at right

as a way of thinking about the

major dimensions of effective

government. This is a reasonable

way of looking at governance in the mature, modern industrialized democracies.

For me, though, there is one more

paradigm that needs to be

emphasized for this framework to

work in the broader world: the

pre-modern paradigm. So we

have the figure at right, instead.

My point first has always been

that too much of the paradigms of

modern governance do not exist

in at least 100+ countries in the world, and in their criticisms of government in their countries,

too many citizens of rich countries don’t realize that theirs are (wait for it) among the best

governed societies in the history of our species.

In this lecture, we are looking especially at governance in Brazil, and other countries that still

lack many of the characteristics of modern governance. As is so often the case in the social

sciences, where boundaries are fuzzy, be careful not to overstate things. Many of the pathologies

1 The four outliers below the trend line and with incomes above $40k are Switzerland, Hong Kong, Singapore, and

the United Arab Emirates.

Figure 2

Paradigms of governance in the modern world

Bureaucracy –effectiveness with the agency

Normative – emphasizes values and accountability

Market-mediated networks – contracting, privatization, etc.

Dialogue-mediated networks – civic engagement

Civic responsibility

Figure 3

Paradigms of governance in the whole world

Pre-modern: societies that lack most of what follows

Bureaucracy – effectiveness with the agency

Normative – emphasizes values and accountability

Market-mediated networks – contracting, privatization, etc.

Dialogue-mediated networks – civic engagementn

Civic responsibility

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we’ll discuss below happen in rich countries, it is all a matter of extremes or, perhaps, whether

these are the exception or the rule.

Administrative reform through what?

What I mean by the goofy title to this lecture is that last week we looked at administrative reform

largely through the lens of resorting to market forces in some way. So we were reforming public

‘administration’ through just getting rid of it, and instead letting market forces work, as

appropriate! That closing, italicized clause is critical, by the way. As Barack Obama noted in

his inaugural address:

The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether

it works -- whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a

retirement that is dignified. Where the answer is yes, we intend to move forward. Where the

answer is no, programs will end. And those of us who manage the public's dollars will be

held to account -- to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day -

- because only then can we restore the vital trust between a people and their

government. Nor is the question before us whether the market is a force for good or ill. Its

power to generate wealth and expand freedom is unmatched, but this crisis has reminded us

that without a watchful eye, the market can spin out of control -- and that a nation cannot

prosper long when it favors only the prosperous. -- 20 January 2009

So the focus this week is more on some of the specific details of administrative reform within

agencies. Bresser Pereira discussed this a bit last week, to repeat:

“Some basic characteristics define managerial public administration: It is outcome- and

citizen-oriented; it assumes that politicians and civil servants are entitled to a limited degree

of trust; it uses as strategy decentralization and the incentive to creativity and innovation; it

controls public managers through the device of management contracts. While bureaucratic

public administration is process-oriented, strictly defining legal procedures to hire personnel,

to purchase goods and service, and to satisfy citizens’ demands, managerial public

administration is result-oriented. Bureaucracy concentrates itself in processes,

notwithstanding the high inefficiency involved, because it believes that this is the safer way

to avoid nepotism and corruption. Controls are preventive; they come a priori. Besides the

bureaucracy realizes that to punish deviations is often difficult, if not impossible; thus, it

prefers to prevent them through strict legal means. Finally, since it lacks clear objectives—an

extremely difficult task is to define performance indicators for state agencies— bureaucracy

has no alternative but to control legal procedures. In contrast, managerial public

administration assumes that nepotism and corruption are to be fought, but that this does not

require rigid procedures. They might have been necessary when patrimonialist values were

dominant, but not now, when the mixing of private and public patrimony is universally

rebuked. On the other hand, new forms of privately appropriating the res publica have

emerged that are not prevented by bureaucratic methods.” (1997, p. 14)

Accountability. Bresser Pereira has been especially exercised by capture of public agencies by

their workers themselves. So rather than

serving the public, or

rather than having been ‘captured’ by powerful private (usually business) interests,

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they have been captured by their own employees.

Patrimonialism. A derivation of this last model is the use of public agencies, by

politicians who control them, to reward friends and supporters. So relatives and

friends get hired even though they neither have a formal role to play, nor even a place

to turn up for work. Then there are ghost employees, with their salaries sent to

someone (perhaps the corrupt politician).

As an example of patrimonialism, this is (my translation of) the passage in Judith Tendler’s Bom

Governo nos Trópicos (the English version of which is in the UNF library), which I have

referred to in class.

“…when a 36 year old reformist Governor, Tasso Jereissati, assumed the post in 1987, the

state payroll consumed 87% of state revenues (when the Constitutional limit is 65%)…The

new Governor tried various measures to resolve the crisis, including enforcing payment of

overdue taxes, a reduction of salary obligations to 40,000 phantom workers (out of a total of

146,000)…” (1997, p. 23).

I also found an article from the New York Times on this, online.

Rotberg and ‘Africa’s new brooms’

Some context. Rotberg discusses these sorts of reforms in two African contexts, Nigeria and

especially Tanzania. Tanzania is an especially interesting case as it adopted a unique

development model on achieving independence: ujamaa socialism, the brainchild of first

President Julius Nyerere. Without going in to the details (a 1999 obit from The Economist

summarizes them adequately, along with an early post-Nyerere article from 2003, along with a

more recent update).

The topics he raises gives one some sense of the problem:

Lack of punctuality: “African time.”

‘Perquisites’ (sometimes mistakenly referred to as ‘perks’): especially travel. This can

extend, though, to cars, housing, abuse of expense accounts, etc.

Symbolic frugality. Independence day celebrations were cancelled, as “It is so shameful that

we are spending huge amounts of money to celebrate 54 years of independence when our

people are dying of cholera,” new President John Magufuli said.

Symbolism for unity? A classic problem which many especially African countries have

(as we discussed a bit in week two) is that they are not nation-states. Tanzania is an

extreme example.

A reliable looking source2 lists describes Tanzania’s ethnolinguistic composition as: 130

different Bantu tribes, of which the largest are Sukuma 14%, Nyamwezi, Haya, Ha,

Makonde 3%, Hehe, Bena, Luguru, Shambala, Turu and Nyakyusa 2% . Swahili make

up 12%. That leaves 100+ groups to share about 50% of the population, most have less

than 1%.

2 Not least because it appears to be a Christian evangelical source (Joshua Project), and so wants good data on

‘unreached’ groups who lack enough Christians to evangelize themselves.

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Q. Where I’m going with this is given the challenge of developing a sense of Tanzanian

collective identity, is there anything wrong with celebrating the anniversary of the birth

of the country?

Outright corruption. There is a discussion of this, emphasized more specifically in an article

from The Guardian. I’ll note, too, that with reference to the Transparency International

corruption perceptions data we have used in this class (Lecture 1, Table 2), Tanzania ranked

119th

in 2014, and had seen its rating deteriorate over each of the previous two years.

Africa improving. I should add, too, that for all the gloom and doom surrounding Africa

when looked at in this way, the continent has made dramatic economic and political

progress in the past 2-3 decades, overcoming the independence day inheritances of the

ravages of (alternately) colonialism and/or slavery, lack of democratic preparation, and

inadequate economic investment.

‘It is too early to tell...’ whether the President’s dynamic gestures will improve Tanzania’s

performance on a sustainable basis, and whether his pointed actions – many essentially

symbolic – will reduce corruption appreciably.”

Cardoso and Brazil’s problems

Desenvolvimentismo! Fernando Henrique Cardoso is an interesting character as well. We earlier

read a chapter from the English language version of his autobiography (on differences between

the English and Portuguese versions). He first made an impact as a sociologist, especially

through a book (co-authored with Enzo Falleto) titled Dependency and Development in Latin

America (which we don’t appear to have at the UNF library). His central thesis, as I remember it,

was to argue that development was possible in the international economy.

Dependency theory. This should not seem too radical, but the point was to challenge a neo-

Marxist perspective called ‘dependency theory’, which argued that developing countries could

not develop, given the structure of the international system. It was all a capitalist plot. At their

1978 publishing date, the evidence seemed to support the dependentistas’ ‘no hope’ argument.

Only Japan had clearly managed to break the Western European (including their settler offspring

elsewhere) stranglehold on development, though Taiwan and South Korea were making

progress.

Cardoso and Faletto rule. Cardoso and Faletto turned out to be correct that development was

possible, certainly in terms of the last two decades or so of global economic outcomes, in which

developing countries have grown at a far faster pace than the rich world. In his subsequent

career, Cardoso entered the government of Itamar Franco as his Finance Minister, and is widely

credited with reducing inflation from over 4000% per year, to single digits. Think about that

number. Worse, this had gone on for a while. As Cardoso put it in his autobiography:

“Prices in Brazil rose an astonishing 2,500 percent in 1993. This kind of ‘hyperinflation’ is

difficult to imagine for someone who has never lived through it. It dominates business and

daily life. On pay day, people lined up outside supermarkets, desperate to spend their money

before it lost its value. Prices on basic goods such as rice -- the Brazilian staple -- could

double in just a day. All contracts -- bank accounts, tax bills, salaries -- had to be adjusted to

inflation, a process that was imprecise and allowed for tremendous corruption. It was, in

other words, economic hell. Regrettably, this was nothing new. Precise calculations were

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tough to come by, but one estimate put the accumulated Brazilian inflation rate from 1968 to

1993 at a mind-boggling 1,825,059,944,843 percent.”

If my calculations are correct, this means that $1,000,000 in cash in 1968 would have been worth

less than a cent in 1993.

In no small part on the strength of this, he was elected President, assuming office in 1994, and

was re-elected to a second four year term in 1998.

Cardoso on Brazil’s problems.

Import substitution industrialization (ISI). An implication of dependency theory was that

countries should try to industrialize and so develop behind tariff walls, given that the

international trading system was a racket that favoured rich countries. There was a logic to this,

for countries with large enough home markets to develop scale economies (and Brazil is

certainly in this category). By ‘protecting’ home industries from foreign competition, Brazilian

manufacturers could grow.

Trade. A problem with ISI was that protecting local firms from competition meant that these

firms, well, were protected from foreign competition. This meant they didn’t need to innovate,

cut costs, and otherwise keep up with global best practice, could instead just ask the Feds for

more protection. As a result, Brazilian consumers were paying more than other global consumers

for inferior goods, resulting in a transfer of wealth from consumers to employees and owners of

protected firms.

Elder statesman? He should be. In addition to his intellectual chops, my impression of his

government was that it was the most effective, most professional, and least corrupt of any of the

governments I’ve seen since studying the country. Given that this period was preceded by 24

years of military governments, which followed nearly a century of post-Republic political ennui,

it is possible that his administrations were the best in Brazil’s history. Ironically, too, he has

gotten far less international acclaim than did Lula da Silva, with Lula’s rags to Planalto (Brazil’s

equivalent of the White House) story.

Details, details, details… There aren’t many detials! We’d get lost in them, anyhow. Instead the

article has a good paragraph that sums up the dynamic:

“As president, Mr Cardoso persuaded Congress to approve no fewer than 35 constitutional

amendments, most rolling back the corporatist state established in the mid-20th century. His

aim, he has often written, was to equip Brazil to flourish in an era of globalisation, through

innovation, technology and competitiveness. Lula at first followed this path. But after 2007,

laments Mr Cardoso, Brazil reverted to a “regressive Utopia” of statist protectionism. It

missed an opportunity that may not come again soon.”

To break this down:

1. Constitutional amendments. Brazil passed a post-dictatorship Constitution in 1988 that

was, by most accounts, not very helpful as it was far, far too detailed and outcome-based.

The New York Times described it thus: “The 245 articles of the Constitution cover nearly

every aspect of daily life, including interest rates, education, health, divorce, Indian

rights, strikes and the minimum wage.” (source)

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Some examples (the Constitution also has 196 pages, source. The same source

produces the US Constitution on 21 pages):

Article 211 – defining Federal Constitutional obligations regarding sports.

Article 201§7 – Retirement. This guarantees men retirement after 35 years of

work, women at 30. Yes, a woman can retire with a full pension at 48, if work

started at 18.

Note that this is not as easy to acquire for the poor, and benefits depend on

contributions.

2. Rolling back the corporatist state. We discussed corporatism in week four (pages 4-5).

Corporatism in Brazil was brought in especially with the mid-20th

century governments

of Getúlio Vargas, a populist-turned-dictator. His corporatism was a top down vehicle to

control society, with labor and business organized in to bodies that were under the control

of the government. These bodies still exist (some of the 14 professional organizations I

studied in my Doctoral dissertation were Vargas era throwbacks), but the dynamic has

changed in a way that isn’t relevant to this course. For our purposes: he wanted to remove

decision-making from the hands of business and labor union elites, as these tended to

work for their member interests, rather than the interest of society. This was done by

organizing these groups, then putting them under government direction.

3. …equip Brazil to flourish in an era of globalization. This is the global economic

imperative that we have discussed repeatedly in this class. A Constitutional amendment

guaranteeing citizens some level of service will be irrelevant if the society is unable to

generate the revenue needed to support this.

4. Brazil reverted to a “regressive Utopia” of statist protectionism… He might be

overstating this a bit, but…

5. It missed an opportunity that may not come again soon. Wellll, I dunno. A pragmatic

turn back by the Workers Party, and stronger vote for Cardoso’s PSDB (Brazilian Social

Democratic Party), would give the next government the votes to do this.

Another missed opportunity. On why many people around the world are dissatisfied with the

global financial system, Brazil under Cardoso led the way in Latin America in privatizing state

owned firms, like Telebras (national phone company), and the Companhia Vale de Rio Doce.

Most probably performed better than in their their previous state, and Brazil reaped tens of

billions of dollars from this. Much of this was spent, though, on defending the real (the

currency) from attacks on the global financial markets.

Don’t forget the social problems! The intro to the article mentions that while Cardoso adopted

(pragmatic) market-based reforms, he spent heavily on poverty-reduction programs (for a

discussion).

Belmiro Castor on the bureaucratic inheritance

The Portuguese inheritance! This is back, though with ‘four central characteristics’:

1. ‘An instinct for immediacy’, or short termism.

Despite Brazil’s settlement earlier than any of the other settler societies we are looking at

in this course (see Week 1, Table 1), there was no head start. The country lost a lot of

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years first due to lack of democracy (the feudal inheritance below), but also because it

was to be exploited, not settled.

As well (and more to the point here) I read a fascinating article some time ago that

pointed out that Brazilians are, in Portuguese, referred to as ‘brasileiros’ rather than

‘brasilianos’. The former suffix (eiro) refers to worker, so a brasileiro is one who works

Brazil, rather than a citizen, as brasiliano would imply (source, in Portuguese). One can

make too much out of these linguistic differences, but it is certainly what Castor is getting

at.

So like all exploiters who do not own the resource (which, anyhow, seemed limitless),

there was little long term planning, or thought for the future.

2. ‘A reliance on improvisation’, or what in Brazilian Portuguese is ‘dar um jeito’ which,

First, a web search shows that this was the theme song of the recent World Cup in Brazil.

For a better translation: “to solve or work around a problem, especially in a way that is

unconventional.”

All very creative (to find a way around a problem!) but it would be more efficient, in

government, to remove the causes of the problems! Coupled with immediacy, there was

little emphasis on changing the tradition of micro-management that Castor ascribes to the

Portuguese Crown.

Stifling of manufacturing.

3. ‘An ambivalent attitude toward profit’. I’d say this day is dead and gone, the wealth

resulting from private sector rewards are eagerly sought (see this, and this).

4. ‘A reverential respect for the state’.

Feudalism

Reliance on the state. I’d argue that this has always less the case from ‘ordinary people’,

unless he is ignoring the

working poor and

underclass. Put differently,

while doing research for my

dissertation, I stumbled

across the following,

stunning data (at right).

Q. What jumps out at you or

put, differently, is there

evidence of a group that

either wasn’t looking to the

state for help or, if it is, had

been ignored?

Bresser Pereira’s ‘Structural public governance’ solution

For the record… I don’t necessarily think Bresser Pereira has nailed it, offer this just for

discussion as a different perspective on the issue.

Government is good, good government is better. Back to (one of my) favorite Brazilian policy

wonks, Bresser Pereira opens with the big picture:

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“Economic development is possible only when a nation-state can count on an effective state.

private entrepreneurs will provide most of the investment, but a capable state will be crucial

in creating the institutional and economic conditions for capital accumulation and growth.”

(p. 16)

Q. What do you think?

On a similar note, further quotes for comment:

“Marx said that the state was the ‘executive committee of the bourgeoisie’. At that time he

might well have been right, but in contemporary democracies the state is, rather, society’s

main instrument of collective action: it is the basic tool that national societies use to achieve

their political goals. Business elites continue to have a major influence, but the middle class

and even the poor have a say. Together, and despite the conflict between them, they

constitute the nation, and the more developed a country or nation-state is, the more able the

nation is to use the state as an instrument to achieve its political objectives (social order,

liberty, well-being, justice, and protection of the environment) in a competitive global

economy” (p. 18-19).

“While we have an example of extremely successful use of public non-state organizations in

the US university system, no country supplies a similar example in the area of basic

education. There is no doubt that reform will work in the direction of more flexible public

non-state systems, but such reform will need to be piecemeal” (p. 21).

“This contracting out or outsourcing has interesting consequences in terms of the size of the

state apparatus. If one defines the size of the state by the number of people directly hired, the

state will be small: the state will just hire high-level senior civil servants, recruited among the

best young talent at society’s disposal, well trained, well paid, and from whom will be

required not only an appropriate republican ethos but high standards of competence.

“Yet, if the size of the state is defined by the tax burden or total state expenditures in

relation to GDP, it may remain large if society decides to continue having a social or

welfare state. The state organization contracted out service delivery only, and retained

responsibility for their finance and performance” (p. 21).

“In the competitive capitalist world in which we live, efficiency is required everywhere” (p.

26).

“A nation is essentially a society or a group of people sharing a common destiny and using

the state as their key instrument of collective action. Historical experience shows that only a

nation-state formed out of a strong or cohesive nation and a capable state is able to devise

and follow a national strategy of economic growth” (p. 26).

A central theme. Rather than the accountable Weberian bureaucracy (and Bresser-Pereira might

caricature a bit in implying that these ‘Weberian bureaucrats’ exercise no discretion), we need, in

addition to:

“…a professional civil service, modern states require senior civil servants to have more

discretion and to be more accountable for their decisions, and the organization of the state to

be more decentralized and involve all sort of partnerships…” (p. 17.

The first major administrative reform(s): civil service.

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“In the second part of the nineteenth century, the more advanced capitalist countries

undertook the first major administrative reform – civil service or bureaucratic reform. This

represented immense progress” (p. 17).

This (immense progress) cannot be emphasized enough. American critics of ‘bureaucracy’,

often characterizing this as the ‘Weberian’ model, are both ahistorical and parochial, not

realizing that good government in the US (and elsewhere) today is largely due to the Weberian

Revolution. Prior to this revolution, both in the world today, and in the ‘developed’ countries in

the past, government was far, far worse. It was this ‘Weberian Revolution’ that pulled countries

out of the ‘pre-modern’ paradigm that I identify in Figure 2. For another perspective on this,

from another brilliant scholar marginalized due to working in a language other than English (this

is my translation from the Portuguese):

“Relative to the organization form of public administration, and despite the justifiable

criticisms of the model and the functioning of bureaucracy, it is necessary to point out that at

least in the Portuguese case, one of the reasons for its limited public responsibility and for the

limitations in its efficiency and efficacy lie precisely in insufficient bureaucracy. The

bureaucratic model of organization, in the sense postulated by the classics of the theory of

organization – Weber, Fayol, Taylor and more recently, Mintzberg and Friedberg --, justly

underline that, to limit the dysfunctionalities of an administration that is unprofessional and

arbitrary, administration should conduct itself through [POSDCORB friendly reforms]…

One of the reasons for the evident dysfunctionalities results from the non-observance of the

so-called bureaucratic model of organization” (2001, p. 14; see also Dray 1995, p. 134-8).

But limits of civil service reform reached!

“Yet after World War II, the countries that were using the state as an instrument to promote

economic development realized that public administration needed to be more flexible. In

consequence, state investments were channeled to state-owned enterprises, and some

agencies were created endowed with some degrees of autonomy. These were attempts to

make the state organization more flexible and, for that reason, more effective in promoting

economic development.”

The second major civil service reform.

“Yet it was only in the 1980s that it became clear that such developmental attempts would

only make sense if they were accompanied by a new form of managing the state

organization: new public management. With this, a second major reform of the state

apparatus was beginning” (p. 18).

Structural public governance model defined: “I call this model of public management reform the

‘structural public governance model’ in so far as it includes structural reform of the state

organization, in addition to major changes in the process of managing personnel and achieving

objectives. Public management reform is the second major administrative reform experienced by

the modern capitalist state” (p. 17).

Two dimensions of new public management (from week four). The New Public Management has

been many things to many people, but last week we identified these two major dimensions:

Neo-Liberalism: reduction of the size of government, and of government regulation.

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Neo-managerialism: improvements in the effectiveness and accountability of government

agencies.

Autonomy… There is a lot of talk about autonomy: freeing managers from rules and allowing

them to manage (even lead!). Entrepreneurship is encouraged, risks (p. 25) kind of wished away

by “new forms of accountability” (p. 25).

…and higher pay. He envisions a small public sector elite (paid accordingly) of policy

formulators and contract managers, with implementing agencies being directed by highly

motivated entrepreneurs

Two aspects for Bresser Pereira.

“The structural public governance model includes an organizational aspect and a management or

accountability aspect.

“On the one hand is the problem of how to structure or organize the state services, what

the strategic core of the state should do, what to delegate to agencies, and which services

to contract out;

“on the other hand is the question of how to manage the whole system – a matter of

process rather than of structure.” (p. 18)

How to structure and organize the state services. Four distinct types of ownership and so

organization (all from p. 19):

(a) state ownership – the public agency. Given what he contrasts this with, much of the

emphasis here is on rigid legislation defining agency purposes and processes.

(b) public non-state ownership – he would put UNF in this category, as well as JTA, JEA,

JaxPort, JAA, etc.

He seems (p. 19) to imply what we refer to as nonprofit organizations, as well.

(c) corporatist ownership – oriented to the protection of group interests: trade unions,

professional associations, etc.3

(d) private ownership – for profit firms.

Several basic forms of activity. “involving production and the exercise of power which are

carried out in a modern society,” all from page 20:

(1) the specific activities of the state involving the exercise of state power and the

management of state resources or of tax revenues, which require a further distinction between

(1.1) the core activities of policy formulation and

(1.2) the implementation of policies still requiring the use of state power;

(2) the activities of social advocacy or social accountability;

(3) the provision of social and scientific services which society decides that the state is

responsible for, such as health care, education, scientific research, and cultural promotion;

(4) the defense or promotion of corporatist interests; and

3 This isn’t a form of organization that is quite as prominent in the US, as a separate category. Another way of

chopping these organizations up would be to turn this category into what we refer to as nonprofit organizations (in

Brazil these are NGOs: ONGs, or Organizações Não Governmentais). It then would have two types: public oriented

NPOs (which I read in to his ‘public non-state ownership’ in the bullet above) and self-interested NPOs. I discuss

this distinction within the Brazilin nonprofit literature in a 1999 article.

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(5) the production of goods and services for competitive markets.

Putting these together, I get something like this:

Figure 4

Bresser Pereira’s structural public governance model State Public non-

state

Corporatist Public not-

for-profit

Private

Policy formulation

Implementation

requiring state power

Social advocacy and

accountability

Social and scientific

services

Defense of corporatist

interests

Goods and services for

markets

My reading is that his point is to contribute to how we think what form of social organization

(i.e. public agency, for-profit firm, NPO, etc.) should do what in modern society.

Centralized policy formulation, decentralized implementation.

“…a central characteristic of public management reform is to separate policy formulation,

which remains centralized, from execution, which is decentralized” (p. 22).

“Still another way of explaining public management reform is to think not in terms of

government but of governance. The English term ‘government’ is often confused with ‘state’,

but even in other languages, where such confusion does not arise, it is useful to distinguish

‘government’ from ‘governance’. Government, as an entity, is formed by the top decision-

making bodies of the state; as a communications flow, it is the decisionmaking process of

public officials (politicians and senior public servants). Governance involves also a process,

but a larger one, as it conveys the idea that public non-state organizations or organizations of

civil society, business firms, individual citizens, and international organizations also

participate in the decision-making process, although the government remains the central

actor” (p. 23, my italics).4

Democracy vital.

“Only within a democratic framework is it possible to accept the high degree of autonomy

assigned to managers in public management reforms. While bureaucratic public

administration was created within a liberal but not democratic state, and was concerned with

strict controls, public management reform is unthinkable without democracy. The autonomy

that the public manager assumes, the possibility of making decisions instead of just executing

the law, is checked a posteriori by managerial accountability mechanisms, particularly by the

4 This is also a point made by Jacques Chevallier (2003).

PAD6836 Lecture 5

Page 13 of 13

social accountability mechanism involving pressure for more transparency and an increased

investigative role on the part of the media” (p. 24).

That’s as good a theme to end on as any.

References

Chevallier, Jacques (2003). “La Gouvernance, un Nouveau Paradigme Étatique?” Revue

française d’administration publique, 105/106, p. 203-17.

Dray, António (1995). O Desafio da Qualidade na Administração Pública. Lisbon: Caminho.

Mozzicafreddo, Juan (2001a). “Modernização da Administração Pública e Poder Político.” In

Juan Mozzicafreddo and João Salis Gomes (eds.) A Administração e Politica:

Perspectivas de Reforma da Administração Pública na Europa e nos Estados Unidos,

Oeiras: Celta Editora, pp. 1-33.

Pereira, Luiz Carlos Bresser (1997). "Managerial public administration: Strategy and structure

for a new state." Journal of Post Keynesian Economics, 20(1).

Tendler, Judith (1997). Bom Governo nos Trópicos, Brasília: ENAP.