The application of the multiple streams model to study the agenda setting. the case of participatory councils in Brazil

• Grant number: 14/01334-2
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Doctorate
• Effective date (Start): October 01, 2014
• Effective date (End): March 31, 2015
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Political Science - Public Policies
• Principal Investigator: Ana Cláudia Niedhardt Capella
• Grantee: Felipe Gonçalves Brasil
• Supervisor: Thomas A. Birkland
• Host Institution: Centro de Educação e Ciências Humanas (CECH). Universidade Federal de São Carlos (UFSCAR). São Carlos , SP, Brazil
• Research place: North Carolina State University (NC State), United States
• Associated to the scholarship: 12/20454-3 - The institutionalization process of popular participation in Brazil: an analysis of the councils of public policy under the models of multiple streams and Punctuated equilibrium, BP.DR

Abstract

Increasing in Brazil since the Constitution of 1988, the participatory management policies such as the Management Councils of Public Policies, Participatory Budgeting and Conferences have been studied as one of the main mechanisms of people's participation and, therefore, of democratic strengthening. In this perspective, some studies related to these new centers of popular empowerment have vigorously emerged in the academic scenario since the late 1990's, especially those turned to the analysis of their efficiency and effectiveness. From the perspective of the models of formulation analysis of public policies of Multiple Streams, this project proposes an inflection in the path of the studies about Management Councils of Brazilian Policies: not looking at the Constitution of 1988 as a guiding milestone in its implementation, but, as a final result of a process which institutionalized, by law, the popular participation in Brazil through the creation of the Management Councils of Public Policies. From the perspective of the Multiple Streams Framework, the general aiming of this project is to reconstruct the 'streams' that generate the process which culminated in the institutionalization of the Public Policies Management Councils in the Federal Constitution of 1988 by the identification and study of their policy subsystems, which are instances composed by different actors that influence the structure of the problem's policy image and its possible solution: empiric and important evidences that constitute these models of analysis. By understanding the Health and Education Management Councils as public policies that have institutionalized their participation in Brazil, the novelty that this project brings into the literature on participatory methods is to work with the history of the social movements not simply as an isolated society dimension but to understand their operation and organization among the models that interpret the way the State interacted with such actors and their demands, the struggle of social movements - symbolic and non-material - arisen in the mid-1970's until the creation of the Health and Education Management Councils in the Federal Constitution of 1988. The interaction between the two dimensions - state and societal - identified from the reconstruction of the proposed models' streams will produce new ways of figuring out the massive institutionalization of the popular participation in Brazil. (AU)