TRANSFORMATIONS OF RURAL TERRITORIES DEVELOPMENT POLICY IN BRAZIL: ANALYSIS OF IMPLEMENTATION IN THE STATE OF RIO GRANDE DO NORTE (2003-2016)
Public Policies; Rural Territories; Cognitive Approach; Ideas; Actors.
This Thesis aims to analyze the implementation of the rural territories development policy, considered for the purposes of this research as composed of the National Program for the Sustainable Development of Rural Territories (Pronat) and the Territories of Citizenship Program (PTC), designed by the federal government since 2003 and operationalized in the state of Rio Grande do Norte, running regularly until 2016. It seeks to understand how a national policy conceived from the perspective of promoting a paradigmatic change in the relationship between the State and Civil Society was implemented. More specifically, this Thesis seeks to answer the following central questions: how was the rural PTR implemented in the Rio Grande Norte territories? Were there different configurations from one territory to another? Why? Which factors could explain this difference? To answer these questions, we chose to carry out the analysis through the theoretical perspective of the cognitive and normative approach to public policies, adopting in particular one of the analysis frameworks associated with it called forums and arenas or agonistic approach to public policies, which seeks to understand the dynamics of production and institutionalization of ideas and their influence on public policies. The theoretical-analytical framework is also composed of the notions of Referential (base of the forums and arenas model) and instrumentation of public action. The empirical research comprised four rural territories (Açu-Mossoró, Sertão do Apodi, Mato Grande and Seridó) from which we undertook the analysis, interspersed by the comparative perspective between them, taking into account the historical context of each of them, as well as the interests, strategies and resources used by the actors to defend their ideas and influence the decisions taken in the process of implementing and operationalizing the policy in these spaces. In terms of methodological procedures, we adopted a mix comprising bibliographic research, documentary research, field research (semi-structured interviews) with the main actors which participated in the policy implementation process, observation and analysis of secondary data. The results showed that rural territorial policy was guided by a global reference that excelled in the participation and democratization of public policies, which aimed, in the final analysis, at establishing new practices for interlocution between the State and civil society; the effects of the policy were more significant in the territories where there was already a social structure in the process of composition even before the territorial action of the MDA, allowing the conformation of local arrangements more adequate to the needs and specificities of family farming; the actors interpreted and adapted to their context the instruments of public action provided by politics through commitments signed in territorial arenas (territorial collegiate bodies), giving rise to other instruments or strategies, the main ones being the constitution of collective organizations (cooperatives) and the creation of spaces for the marketing of family farming products; the conflicts identified in the arenas were polarized by civil society actors and representatives of municipal governments and involved diverse interests related to the financing of actions in the territories; the rural territorial policy, supposedly intersectoral, remained under the sectoral logic with little progress in the integration of public policies within the scope of the federal government and between it and the other spheres of government (state and municipal).