The Network-State and specialists in public policy and government management: an anthropological analysis of the administrative reform in Brazil

• Grant number: 16/04598-6
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: June 01, 2016
• End date: October 01, 2018
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Anthropology - Theory of Anthropology
• Principal Investigator: Jorge Luiz Mattar Villela
• Grantee: Barbara Gonçalves Moraes
• Host Institution: Centro de Educação e Ciências Humanas (CECH). Universidade Federal de São Carlos (UFSCAR). São Carlos , SP, Brazil
• Associated scholarship(s): 17/12422-8 - Network Governance: regimes of state discursiveness and visuality, BE.EP.IC

Abstract

The aim of this research project is to reflect on the arrangements of institutions, practices, techniques and knowledge incited by the Administrative Reform in Brazil. Special attention will be directed to the theoretical model of the Network-State and the management tools mobilized by the Specialists in Public Policies and Government Management (EPPGGs), a career that fits within the recent changes in the staff of the executive bureaucracy. The proposal is to develop a topological analysis of power, as proposed by Collier ([2009] 2011), in order to examine the mutual transformations effected by the model of the Network-State and the practices of the EPPGGs. The methodology of this project is based on three analytical tools: fieldwork carried out at National Association of Specialists in Public Policies and Government Management (ANESP) in Brasilia; the analysis of documents available on the platforms of ANESP, the National School of Public Administration (ENAP) and various federal agencies such as the Ministry of Planning and Management; literature review on topics such as anthropology of public administration, the state and experts. The project is located more widely within the discussions of an anthropology of public administration and, more specifically, is part of the efforts of the Ethnographic Experimentation Laboratory (LE-E) UFSCar to undertake experimental ethnographies of contemporary state practices.