Servidores públicos no Brasil: lições do institucionalismo para a compreensão e a transformação do regime jurídico da função pública

Abstract

This thesis investigates the nature of relations between the Brazilian bureaucracy, its legal regimen, and the fostering of constitutional democracy in Brazil. The hypothesis to be developed is that there are inconsistencies in the analysis offered of the national bureaucracy by the mainstream legal scholarship in Brazil and that the institutionalist movement can contribute to a more realistic approach regarding its legal regimen, the silent transformations it has experienced over the last decades and possible directions for its improvement. Through an institutionalist perspective, the thesis studies the importance of a professional and politically independent state bureaucracy in promoting democratic values, the potential conflicts that arise in the interactions between civil servants and political agents, the historical roots of the current legal regimen to which civil servants are subject, the origins and effects of its recent transformations, and possible paths to perfectionate it in order to increase state capacity and accountability in the Brazilian civil service. After a history of failed attempts to build a professionalized bureaucracy, the 1988 Constitution has structured the civil service system according to mostly Weberian ideas. Under this system the Brazilian civil service has accomplished important advancements, broadened its levels of professional capacity and political independence, and helped to consolidate constitutional and democratic values. However, the limitations of the civil service system inaugurated in 1988 called for its reform during the 1990s. The results of this reform, in addition to problems of the original civil service legal regimen it was not able to alleviate, are bringing important transformations to this system, which remain underexplored by the Brazilian legal scholarship. Although these gradual changes answer managerial, political, fiscal, and technological demands, they weaken the Brazilian bureaucracy’s ability to deliver high quality public services and act as agents who promote and defend democratic values. In order to address these demands and, at the same time, contribute to halt its negative effects, the work discusses reform proposals to build a civil service system that is more responsive to the main demands of the Brazilian state and more able to promote public policies.