Comparative research involving researchers from the EUA, Germany, Japan, Switzerland, Belgium, India, South Africa, Czech Republic, Canada and Brazil on coordination mechanisms for public service management in metropolitan areas and their egalitarian effects.
From Marta Teresa da Silva Arretche e Edgard Fusaro.
The project studies the mechanisms that affect the capacity of the Brazilian state to provide social services as well as the effectiveness of social policies. Particularly, the project examines the impact of federal intervention on the agenda of subnational governments and also the impact of the subnational governments’ political autonomy and the regional disparities on inequality of public policy provision.
Three main questions guide this research project with the objective of verifying if increases in specific spending categories can be observed before elections whereas other types of spending are reduced by governors in Argentinean provinces and in Brazilian states. The first one asks if since the democratization elections have served as a stimulus to change the composition of spending by governments in Argentinean provinces and in Brazilian states. Secondly, are governor elections in the immediate aftermath of the democratic transition more prone to provoke sudden changes in budget allocations to specific types of spending, again in the provinces and the states? Finally, what is the impact of federalism on the fiscal behavior of Argentinean provinces and Brazilian states in election years? In order to answer these questions, this project will explore how the elections for governor influenced the composition of spending in Argentinean provinces and states in Brazil from the beginning of democratization through to 2009.
From Lorena Guadalupe Barberia e George Avelino Filho.
New studies adopting social network analysis have been improving the understanding of processes within the State, shedding light on the relationship between the State and its immediate political surroundings, especially politicians and private companies. This set of studies showed the importance of networks in the operation of public policies. However, given the specificities of the policies studied, these investigations did not provide a significant contribution to the connections of networks within the State, their associative web and the users of the policies. On the other hand, studies on social inequalities faced by cities give special attention to the so-called street-level bureaucracy along with popular organizations. This research aims to fulfill this gap by analyzing the case of the last five governments of the city of São Paulo in a particularly relevant policy to urban inequalities – housing policies. This policy counts on organized social movements, and also on a state bureaucracy traditionally connected to them, therefore helping us to understand more about the State and its role on the reproduction of social inequalities in the city.
This research investigates recently adopted housing policies within the Brazilian metropolitan context. It also analyzes the main features of popular housing alternatives in the metropolises. The study counts on primary data collected from municipal public agencies and relating to housing policies and other housing alternatives, and geocoded demographic information that can be overlaid with census data. By the use of Geographical Information Systems, the research can produce a profile of the population living in each of the alternatives – shanty towns (favelas) and public housing projects – and problematize the literature on urban studies and urban sociology.
New studies adopting social network analysis have been improving the understanding of processes within the State, shedding light on the relationship between the State and its immediate political surroundings, especially politicians and private companies. This set of studies showed the importance of networks in the operation of public policies. However, given the specificities of the policies studied, these investigations did not provide a significant contribution to the connections of networks within the State, their associative web and the users of the policies. On the other hand, studies on social inequalities faced by cities give special attention to the so-called street-level bureaucracy along with popular organizations. This research aims to fulfill this gap by analyzing the case of the last five governments of the city of São Paulo in a particularly relevant policy to urban inequalities – housing policies. This policy counts on organized social movements, and also on a state bureaucracy traditionally connected to them, therefore helping us to understand more about the State and its role on the reproduction of social inequalities in the city.
The objective of this investigation is to compare patterns of governance in large cities by focusing on São Paulo, Paris, London and Mexico City in cooperation with research teams from Science Po, Paris, Bartlet School in London and Cide in Mexico. We do not expect to find single or coherent patterns of government and governance in each city (or even among them) but rather different patterns depending on the way a specific policy area combines the interactions of state agents from various levels of authority with the private initiative and groups (legal and illegal) from the civil society, acting within diverse relational and institutional environments. In theoretical terms it means to overcome the classical issue of Who governs? by asking Who governs What? and also Who governs When the State does not? The comparison follows a case study logic investigating the existence of processes and their combination order so as to specify under what conditions the various patterns of governance found are formed and operate.
This research intends to produce a better understanding of the Brazilian budget process. The focus is on understanding the impact and the logic behind budget amendments made by state representatives as there is virtually no research about this issue. The literature that discusses the Brazilian budget process has been focused on the analysis of individual amendments and their connection with the electoral system. This investigation, on the contrary, understands that the budget process cannot be reduced to these questions only because the level of complexity is so high that it goes beyond the capacity any single investigation. The empirical part of the research consists in collecting the amount (N and sums) of amendments presented by each State in Brazil in the 1996 – 2011 period, the sums of executed/spent amendments, a qualitative analysis of these amendments in order to group them by type of program and area and, finally, an analysis of the party composition of the congressmen forming these state delegations to verify if a relationship between parties and the allocation of amendments exists.
From Carla Araujo Voros.
Since its first edition, the project ‘Patterns of Executive-Legislative Relations’ organizes and updates the ‘Cebrap Legislative database’. The database contains key information about Brazilian legislation dating back to the 1988 Constitution, including, among other information, the identification of origin/author and subsequent proceedings of all bills transformed into law, for all types of authors, and bills introduced exclusively by the Executive, in this case including all types of outcomes. The information gathered in this database is essential for any analysis of Executive-Legislative relations. Besides updating the database, this project is now expanding the universe of collection. The ultimate goal is to gather data on all introduced bills.
From Carla Araujo Voros.
Considering that electoral politics substantially influence the supply of public policies, this project investigates voting behavior in a metropolitan region. Previous results of investigations undertaken by the Center for Metropolitan Studies showed that voting behavior is highly predictable and related to socio-economic factors. These results, however, were based only on data for the city of São Paulo. This study is one of a kind in the Brazilian literature in terms of methods and data used. Instead of information from surveys, we work with the lowest possible unit of aggregation for election results, namely, the ballot box. Previous findings refer only to São Paulo, the most developed state in the country, where the two major national political parties in the country have deep roots. Thus, one of the objectives is to test if similar results are found in other states. For this reason, the project is expanding the spatial coverage of the investigation by including as many new states as possible. The project continues to employ Gary King’s methodology to identify the electoral base of parties and candidates, which combines electoral data with socio-economic variables. Efforts in this direction have already been made with respect to the pattern of vote distribution in the Metropolitan Region of Rio de Janeiro and comparing the results with the ones obtained for the city of São Paulo. Data organization regarding the study of intra-urban electoral behavior has been already completed. Besides differences in the level of wealth, the political history of the Metropolitan Region of Rio de Janeiro and its role in national politics are also a contrast to São Paulo. A further objective of the research is to understand the mechanisms that explain the observed voting patterns by applying an empirical test of theoretically oriented hypotheses.
