Local capacities and multilevel governance in the implementation of environmental policies

Author(s)

Fernando Peres Rodrigues

• Document type: Doctoral Thesis
• Press: São Paulo.
• Institution: Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH/SBD)
• Defense date: 2023-09-04

Examining board members

Adrian Gurza Lavalle; Carla Cecilia Rodrigues Almeida; Carla de Paiva Bezerra; Renata Mirandola Bichir

• Advisor: Adrian Gurza Lavalle

Abstract

This thesis seeks to understand the factors of variation in the implementation of policies at the local level. For this purpose, it framed the approaches of multilevel governance and state capacities in the analysis of the municipal implementation of two environmental policies, through the carrying out of environmental licensing and the creation of conservation units by the municipalities. The analyzes alternate between logit regressions, to define the main factors and to describe multilevel governance patterns in each policy, and causal analyses, using matching and differences-in-differences techniques, to analyze the effect and the role of municipal environmental councils in the implementation arrangement of the respective policies. The analysis data come from the composition of several databases with municipal information from IBGE, Ipea and the Ministry of the Environment, with special emphasis on MUNIC surveys and the National Register of Conservation Units - CNUC. The results pointed to the combination of three main factors in explaining the variation of the analyzed policies, namely: state supervision/regulation, the population size of the municipality and the state capacities of the municipalities. Furthermore, it can be concluded that there are different patterns of multilevel governance in the same sector and in the same policy, as well as that the same local capacities, particularly municipal environmental councils, can have different roles in the implementation arrangement of each policy. (AU)

• FAPESP's process: 19/07966-4 - How do subnational state capacities in Brazilian environmental sector provide local agency?
• Grantee: Fernando Peres Rodrigues
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate