Rethinking the institutionalization: the role of sectoral and socio-state configurations in the trajectories of public problems

• Grant number: 25/08275-6
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate
• Start date: August 01, 2025
• End date: July 31, 2026
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Political Science - Public Policies
• Principal Investigator: Adrian Gurza Lavalle
• Grantee: Victoria Lustosa Braga
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Associated research grant: 13/07616-7 - CEM - Center for Metropolitan Studies, AP.CEPID

Abstract

The research is part of a broader field of study on the relationship between civil society and the State in public policy production and aims to analyze how the interplay between two factors affects the trajectory of public problems institutionalization and their transformation into policies: the structural configurations of the policy sectors - understood through the concept of sectoral hermeticism - and the organizational configurations of the societal and state actors who play a leading role in the processes of institutionalizing these problems - which will be approached as policy communities. To this end, four institutionalization trajectories of public problems related to the agendas of marginalized actors in the political system will be examined: the promotion of territorial cultural groups; the regulation of herbal medicines and medicinal plants; the deforestation of the Amazon; and access to land for family farmers. In theoretical terms, the research is related to the debates of historical neoinstitutionalism, especially those focused on State-civil society interactions in the production of public policies and the processes of policy change. The four trajectories will be analysed between 1987, the beginning of the Constituent Assembly, and 2026, the last year of the Lula III government, in order to cover a period marked by different governing coalitions and continuities and changes in the institutionalization of each of these public problems. Methodologically, the study adopts a qualitative approach to reconstruct four trajectories based on a small-N comparative historical analysis, incorporating process tracing and comparative methods. (AU)