Brazilian Federal Budget: comparative attention in the phases of the Brazilian budgetary process

• Grant number: 24/03394-4
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Master's degree
• Start date: August 01, 2024
• End date: January 31, 2025
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Political Science - Public Policies
• Principal Investigator: Felipe Gonçalves Brasil
• Grantee: Felipe José Miguel Garcia
• Supervisor: Edward J Fagan
• Host Institution: Escola de Artes, Ciências e Humanidades (EACH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), United States
• Associated to the scholarship: 22/16019-1 - Brazilian Federal Budget: an analysis of the capacities and diversities of the governmental agenda, BP.MS

Abstract

This ongoing master's research seeks to understand the evolution of the Brazilian governmental and decision-making agenda from 2000 to 2022, focusing on the Federal Government's Public Budget. It uses the Punctuated Equilibrium Theory (PET) to explore whether the agenda was marked by incrementalism or sudden and punctual changes (BAUMGARTNER; JONES, 1995, 2005). This analysis is based on the Annual Budget Law Project (PLOA), the Annual Budget Law (LOA), and the committed executed budget. The study proposes a comprehensive view of the evolution of the focus of the governmental and decision-making agenda over time, analyzing these three stages of the annual budget process of the Federal Government. Each stage of this process is seen as a place of institutional and political conflict, in which the Executive and Legislative Powers form their preferences and public policy priorities. The research seeks to answer the questions: What are the governmental priorities of public policies of the three budgetary pieces (PLOA, LOA, and executed)? What is the dynamics of attention when comparing these pieces with each other? Is there instability or stability in the Brazilian Budget? Methodologically, the research uses a mixed methodology, employing content analysis (BARDIN, 1977) of budgetary appropriations, using the pre-established categories by the methodology of the Comparative Agendas Projects (CAP) and the Brazilian Policy Agendas Projects (BPAP) (BEVAN, 2019). And quantitative, calculations of l-kurtosis and Pearson's linear correlation to analyze the behavior of policy priority changes in the Brazilian budgetary process. The general objective is to understand how public policies were allocated and prioritized in the annual public budgets over the studied interval. The specific objectives are to understand how public policies were allocated at each stage of the Brazilian budgetary process and to analyze changes in resource allocation over time in the different stages of the annual budget. To achieve these objectives, a quantitative and comparable database will be built and analyzed, through the qualitative and quantitative methodologies proposed by CAP for studies of the public budget, with the budgetary information of the Union in the interval from 2000 to 2022.