An analysis of public policies in Brazil: from an unnamed practice to the institutionalization of the “public field”

• Autor(a) principal: Farah, Marta Ferreira Santos
• Data de Publicação: 2016
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por; eng
• Título da fonte: Revista de Administração Pública
• Texto Completo: https://periodicos.fgv.br/rap/article/view/64710
• topic: public policy; public policy analysis; public administration; the field of public policy; the public field.; política pública; análisis de política pública; administración pública; campo de política pública.; política pública; análise de políticas públicas; administração pública; campo de política pública; campo de públicas.

This article reconstitutes the trajectory of public policy analysis in Brazil, based on literature that distinguishes between policy studies and policy analysis and on the theory from the scientific field. This is essentially a work of bibliographic research, focusing on studies relating to State intervention and bureaucracy in Brazil. The reconstitution of the this work of analysis, understood as the production and mobilization of knowledge in favor of polices, was based on the following analytical categories, developed especially for this work using literature on public policy as a reference: kind of knowledge mobilized; locus of analysis; the actors and institutions involved; and the target audience for this kind of methodology of analysis. This article shows that the analysis of public policies had been around in Brazil since the 1930s, but without it being properly institutionalized as a specific scientific field, and that it has only been since 2000, with the growth in production of research and more courses offered on the subject of public policies that we have seen a change in this scenario. The increased supply of literature on public policy, as well as the boom we are experiencing in undergraduate and graduate programs on the subject suggest that we are witnessing the institutionalization of a new field — the “campo de públicas” or “public field”— one in which the focus on public policies through policy analysis plays a leading role.