Mecanismos federais de coordenação de políticas sociais e capacidades institucionais locais : o caso do Programa Bolsa Família

Abstract

This thesis analyzes the Bolsa Família Program (PBF), dealing with its evolution over the Lula government, both in terms of its scope and its institutional design and also considering the changes in its main goals. Given the federal nature of the Brazilian state, the main goal is to show the challenges the central government face to ensure the proper implementation of a national program of conditional cash transfer to be managed by the municipalities. For this purpose, are reviewed, on the one hand, the strategies and institutional resources available to the federal government to achieve its goals for the PBF, and on the other hand, the results and the dynamics of the municipal implementation of the program in two major urban centers, São Paulo and Salvador. The study is based on information on the performance of the national program and also considers the municipal implementation of the PBF in the selected cases, using data from surveys carried out with low income people and also semi-structured interviews with municipal managers of the program in these two cities. The thesis identifies the main mechanisms developed to ensure the growing power of the federal government in order to make its main guidelines for the program are actually implemented at the municipal level. It also shows that the implementation of the PBF is affected not only by its institutional design, set at the federal level, but also by the different institutional capabilities available at the local level human resources, management capacity and coordination among various services and policies, infrastructure, among others and by the various local political interests in greater or lesser coordination with the national program. Finally, the thesis also examines the limits and possibilities for the articulation of the PBF with a broader social assistance policy.