Governance as a strategy to manage public projects:a new relation between government and society in Brazil

The article describes the results of a descriptive/interpretive study that was guided by the assumption that the public management of the State of Santa Catarina (Brazil) has borrowed Public Governance Strategies since 2003. A... [ view full abstract ]

The article describes the results of a descriptive/interpretive study that was guided by the assumption that the public management of the State of Santa Catarina (Brazil) has borrowed Public Governance Strategies since 2003. A conception was developed in order to verify the presence of such governance elements in the public project management. The conception is anchored to allow for the development process to take place by means of cooperation between state, market and civil society based one equity and responsiveness. The theoretical framework inspired the Public Governance Strategies presented in this study, which are: coproduction of development through cooperation between state, market and civil society (PGS1); State coordination of the cooperation process, where the state acting as a mediator of relations (PGS2); a shift of the state authority in downward, outward and upward directions, encouraging networking (PGS3); emphasis on efficiency and effectiveness, associating mechanisms of deliberative and direct democracy in order to search for responsive results(PGS4); and planning with criteria of equity and with a view toward regional development(PGS5). The empirical research, inspired by Weber’s ideal-type perspective, investigated the presence of these strategies in two decentralized Agencies of Regional Development (ARD1 and ARD2) of the state of Santa Catarina and studied the management of public projects implemented in the context of the agencies. The results indicated the presence of public governance strategies in different degrees in each of the ARDs. In a scale from 0 to 10, the public governance index identified in ARD1 was of 4,61, whereas for the ARD2 the index was of 7,43. The results show that although there are important signs of good practices in public governance related to the management of public projects in Santa Catarina, there are opportunities for improvement in terms of participation of society as a whole.