Em elaboração.
Cooperative federalism. Plan of Articulated Actions. Intergovernmental relations.
The comprehension of the power-sharing dynamic in recent transformations of Brazilian federalism passes through the elucidation of the federative game rules existent in the interdependency of the federated entities. The objective of this thesis is to analyse the Plan of Articulated Actions (Plano de Ações Articuladas – PAR) - a four-year multidimensional plan of educational policy elaborated by local authorities - by placing it in the context of Brazilian federalism, focusing on the interdependency of the federated entities, and highlighting the PAR’s management in the city of Campina Grande,Paraíba. This paper is based on the analysis of MEC’s federative coordination and the theory of cooperative federalism, with a focus on the categories that ground the search of unity in diversity: decentralization, autonomy and collaboration. The research is qualitative in nature, basing itself on documental analysis and analysis of the resulting content of semi-structured interviews, organized by thematic categories elaborated through semantic networks. The PAR consists of three phases: its conception, executed by MEC; its diagnosis and elaboration – developed under a hierarchical standard of intergovernmental relations – achieved by the local authority in question; its execution and monitoring. In summary, the PAR operates by establishing standards and territorially distributing power through division and assignment of responsibilities to federal, state and local authorities. It ruptures with a practice of separate and unrelated demands, instituting a culture of planning. Unfortunately, the local specificities are overlooked and the regional asymmetries keep on existing, as well as many other complications such as unfulfilled commitments, the absence of monitoring mechanisms and lack of transparency of the initiatives. It is argued that changes in management can trigger ruptures in the development of PAR actions, as well as discontinuing previous managers’ planning. There are also scenarios in which the responsibilities are transferred from PAR to third parties, but, in some cases, the managers not only understand, but also take on the responsibility of instituting local mechanisms to improve education quality. Joint responsibilities are exercised in a context that requires clarity in the sharing of power and effective communication between the entities. Due to the interaction, the conception of public policies finds itself in overlapping and interpenetrating areas. In Campina Grande, limits were encountered in the materialization of collaboration regime, and few advances are shown in terms of joint responsibilities, with the autonomy of the local authority coming to the forefront in the definition of local practices. The conclusions emphasize that the conception of an initiative coordinated by MEC, but centralized and articulated to the local authority’s education management (which runs on a logic of decentralization), illustrates the dilemma in the implementation of social policies present in Brazilian federalism, revealing the tension between the standardization of educational policies and the heterogeneity of local authorities’ institutional capacities. Therefore, the following recommendations aim to improve the governments’ decision-making.