Doctoral Dissertation Research in Political Science: Bureaucratic Development and Decay: Explaining Policy Capacity In Brazil

政治学博士论文研究：官僚主义的发展与衰败：解释巴西的政策能力

• 批准号: 0819267
• 负责人: Richard Snyder
• 金额: $ 1.2万
• 依托单位: Brown University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2008
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2008-08-01 至 2009-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0819267&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Political; Science

Uneven policy implementation and outcomes are commonplace both across policy areas, such as healthcare or basic infrastructure, as well as the same policy across subnational political units. What explains variation in the capacity to implement policies within the same country? This project makes two key contributions to understanding state capacity. Empirically, the project systematically maps variation in capacity throughout Brazil. This will be done first at the federal level by a comparison across four ministries, Health, Education, Social Development and Energy, followed by a within-ministry analysis tracking programs across the states of Bahia, Minas Gerais and São Paulo. By using a multi-method approach to measure four major components of state capacity, defined as resources, quality of the bureaucracy, institutional design, and territorial reach, the project provides a richer and more nuanced picture of state capacity. Theoretically, this research will highlight how subnational political actors, specifically governors, mayors, and state-level bureaucrats, affect sub-national variation in the capacity to implement federal policy. The intellectual merit of this project stems from the careful use of mixed methods, including focused surveys, in-depth interviews, archival research, as newly-developed Geographic Information System (GIS) tools to systematically map the presence of state infrastructure across the country. The empirical knowledge generated through extensive fieldwork will provide a nuanced understanding of the subnational variation in state capacity, thereby advancing the academic discussion beyond national-level discussions and providing a more thorough measure as well. While focusing on Brazil, this project also speaks more broadly to issues of building state capacity in large federal systems, and as such, is potentially generalizable to other countries, like Russia, India, and to a smaller extent, the United States. The value of the project is broader than its immediate academic contribution. First, by publishing its results and making the original data available to the scientific community around the world, the project has the potential to enhance our scientific understanding of state institutional capacity, and can be used as a component of future comparative studies. This project will also develop a partnership between US and Brazilian universities (specifically, Brown University and the Center for Public Policy Research (NEPP) at the Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP), and share data with independent research institutions abroad, such as CEBRAP (Centro Brasileiro de Análise e Planejamento). Ultimately, however, the main goal of this project is to provide potential benefits to society in the form of better public service provision. By isolating the key processes and mechanisms behind the development of institutional capacity, this study will have clear implications for superior design of public bureaucracy, infrastructure, and federal programs. As such, it is the goal of the research to make the results available not only in research circles, but also to public agencies and nonacademic publications as well.

无论是在医疗保健或基本基础设施等政策领域，还是在国家以下各级政治单位之间，政策执行和结果不均衡都是司空见惯的。如何解释同一国家内政策执行能力的差异？该项目对理解国家能力有两个关键贡献。从经验来看，该项目系统地绘制了巴西各地产能的变化情况。这将首先在联邦一级通过比较卫生部、教育部、社会发展部和能源部四个部委的情况来完成，然后进行部内分析，跟踪巴伊亚州、米纳斯吉拉斯州和S圣保罗州的项目。通过使用多种方法衡量国家能力的四个主要组成部分，即资源、官僚机构的质量、机构设计和领土覆盖范围，该项目提供了关于国家能力的更丰富、更细微的图景。从理论上讲，这项研究将突出地方政治行为者，特别是州长、市长和州级官僚如何影响地方政府执行联邦政策的能力差异。这个项目的学术价值来自于谨慎地使用混合方法，包括重点调查、深度访谈、档案研究，作为新开发的地理信息系统(GIS)工具，以系统地绘制全国各地国家基础设施的存在情况。通过广泛的实地调查产生的经验知识将使人们对国家能力的差异有一个细致入微的了解，从而推动学术讨论超越国家一级的讨论，并提供一种更彻底的衡量标准。在关注巴西的同时，该项目也更广泛地谈到了在大型联邦系统中建设国家能力的问题，因此，可能可以推广到其他国家，如俄罗斯、印度，以及在较小程度上的美国。该项目的价值比其直接的学术贡献更广泛。首先，通过发布其结果并向世界各地的科学界提供原始数据，该项目有可能增强我们对国家机构能力的科学理解，并可用作未来比较研究的一个组成部分。该项目还将在美国和巴西的大学(特别是布朗大学和坎皮纳斯大学的公共政策研究中心(NEPP))之间建立伙伴关系，并与国外的独立研究机构共享数据，如CEBRAP(Centro Brasileiro de Aanálise e Plane jamento)。然而，最终这一项目的主要目标是以提供更好的公共服务的形式为社会提供潜在利益。通过隔离机构能力发展背后的关键过程和机制，这项研究将对公共官僚机构、基础设施和联邦项目的优化设计产生明确的影响。因此，这项研究的目标是不仅在研究界，而且在公共机构和非学术出版物中提供结果。