How to guarantee autonomy and alignment between the national and subnational levels? To forward their claims, GR professionals must always be attentive to the competences of the Union, the Federation, the States, and Municipalities.
Public policies are a set of actions strategically selected and designed to implement decisions made by the Public Authorities aiming to solve common problems or ensure citizenship rights. However, thinking about their applications and effectiveness for the entire population in a country that contains numerous States and Cities requires the creation of democratic mechanisms for the maintenance of citizenship and local autonomy of the State's sub-representations in their respective regions. It is in this context that the Decentralization of Public Policies emerges as an important action for the State to be present in different localities through representations capable of acting in a way to generate efficiency and effectiveness in public policy management.
Challenges of the Decentralization of Public Policies in Brazil
Understanding the decentralization of public policies involves different conceptions and concepts about the subject that range from the non-hierarchy of activities and decisions to the transfer of decision-making power to different actors. The defense of decentralization involves different aspects, such as transfer of attributions and decision-making power, political autonomy of local and regional levels, transfer, and delimitation of competences between federated entities.
In Brazil, the agenda on decentralization gains ground with the democratization of the country which, among various principles, starts to enable greater citizen participation in the formulation and implementation of policies in search of greater fulfillment of their demands by the State. Thus, new institutional arrangements are built in order to make possible the integration of the different regions of the country. It is within this scope that municipal actions gain ground against the bureaucratization and hierarchization of policies based on models to be followed nationally and, in this sense, new mechanisms for the participation of actors in municipal spheres are increased.
The decentralization process is complex, especially considering the different administrative capacities of the various States and Municipalities to carry out public management. The Brazilian constitutional framework of decentralization of social, social assistance, cultural, and health policies, for example, requires a series of actions to ensure the effectiveness of these policies, such as delimiting the competences of each sphere of government in the financing of each policy, fulfilling the planned budget and financial transfers to the respective municipal, state, and national systems.
Furthermore, although the Brazilian State is Federative, that is, it has its territorial units autonomous and integrated to a central Government, there are still strong characteristics of a unitary State. Thus, it is observed that federated entities have a delimited autonomy to direct certain issues, which can represent an obstacle to decentralization.
Exclusive, concurrent competences and health policies
One of the challenges of decentralization, as mentioned earlier, is related to the fact that the Federal Constitution of 1988 stipulates concurrent competences for social policies, which implies different modes of application in practice according to the reality of each Municipality and State. Art. 198, for example, brings the prerogative on health that “Public health actions and services integrate a regionalized and hierarchical network and constitute a single system” where the first guideline is: “I- decentralization, with single direction in each sphere of government;”. Since promulgation, therefore, several institutional modifications have collaborated so that this process occurs and in fact there is a transfer of attributions to municipalities in the health area. It is from this that local governments have implemented strategies for the adhesion of the municipalization of public policies according to incentives, which does not occur in all cases due to the fiscal and administrative capacities of each locality.
This municipalization scenario, therefore, required that the rules on the competences of each entity be previously defined, which is why Law 8080/1990 regularized the organization, the functioning of health services, and the attributions competent to the Union, the States, the Federal District, and the Municipalities. Articles 16 to 19 of this law, therefore, delimit the competences and generally reinforce the municipal attribution of planning and execution. The Union is responsible for, among other functions, financing, resource allocation, regulation of the performance of municipal and state actions, and intergovernmental cooperation. Therefore, this organization aims at providing services with more efficiency and quality, associating the demands of each region in a unique and singular way to the action project they need.
This is an example of how the decentralization of public policies takes a new post-constitution direction with new arrangements of competences in the health field. Considering that the Constitution brings exclusive competences to the Union (art. 22) and concurrent to States and Municipalities (art. 24), it is necessary to delimit what corresponds to a certain entity in a public policy so that it is possible to implement policies in a decentralized manner.
Intersectoral Articulations and their importance for decentralization
The articulation between government sectors is extremely relevant for decentralization to occur effectively and efficiently, accompanied by communication between the agents of the process, in addition to greater transparency of actions, monitoring, and evaluation of the implemented public policies.
This model provides a new organizational format, bringing innovation in the way of planning, executing, and controlling government actions, which makes the structure more adherent to the citizen's need. These intersectoral articulations are compatible and allied with decentralization, and converge both in structure and in organizational processes.
This process is possible through communication media and information technologies that facilitate the interaction between institutions and society.
Decentralization: Opportunities for Improvement in Participation
Decentralization is a mechanism that has the capacity to develop an approximation between social actors and public decision-makers, directly incorporating popular participation and providing a new perspective from the population on public processes, where there is better perception about community actions and problem-solving, in addition to greater control over bureaucracy. Through this proximity between government and society, decentralization also provides, from an economic point of view, efficiency in the allocation of resources, due to the ease of detecting demands and the establishment of a State more permeable to them.
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This article was written in partnership with Equalitas UFMG Jr, Junior Consultancy of the Public Management course at the Federal University of Minas Gerais. Learn more about Equalitas by clicking here
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