Banca de QUALIFICAÇÃO: FERNANDA KALLYNE REGO DE OLIVEIRA

Uma banca de QUALIFICAÇÃO de DOUTORADO foi cadastrada pelo programa.
STUDENT : FERNANDA KALLYNE REGO DE OLIVEIRA
DATE: 22/09/2026
TIME: 14:00
LOCAL: Google Meet
TITLE:

THE MANAGEMENT OF SOCIAL ASSISTANCE POLICY IN THE STATE OF RIO GRANDE DO NORTE: A LOOK AT THE DIFFERENCES AND SIMILARITIES BETWEEN THE MUNICIPALITIES OF MOSSORÓ AND NATAL

KEY WORDS:

Unified Social Assistance System (SUAS). State Capacities. Federalism and Decentralization. Historical-Institutional Trajectory. Comparative Public Policy.

PAGES: 236
BIG AREA: Ciências Sociais Aplicadas
AREA: Planejamento Urbano e Regional
SUMMARY:

This doctoral dissertation investigates the challenges and limitations in managing social assistance policy in the municipalities of Mossoró and Natal, located in the State of Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil. Social Assistance Policy in Brazil is historically marked by a dialectical tension between social rights and charity/patronage, having transitioned from an assistentialist and philanthropic model to a public State policy following the 1988 Federal Constitution and the subsequent institutionalization of the Unified Social Assistance System (SUAS). Given the decentralized design of Brazilian federalism, this research addresses the following central problem: how do local historical trajectories and institutional capacities condition the implementation of SUAS against national guidelines and unified federal direction? The main objective is to analyze the differences and similarities in the constitution of social assistance policy in the municipalities of Natal and Mossoró, aiming to identify specificities of the Northeastern trajectory and testing the assumption that the promptness of local system implementation stemmed from a previously organized service network. Theoretically, the research is grounded in debates regarding Brazilian federalism, national coordination of social policies, and local governance, emphasizing how uniform federal directives are mediated by local institutional trajectories and specificities. The central hypothesis posits that the implementation of SUAS, starting in 2005, produced major transformative impacts in Northeastern municipalities, where the swiftness of system adoption was associated with pre-existing, organized care networks. Methodologically, the study adopts a comparative approach through a mixed-methods (quantitative-qualitative) design of documentary and bibliographical nature, employing a historical-institutional framework dating back to the 1930s. Waiving interviews due to the density of institutional materials, the research triangulates official secondary data sources (SUAS Census, IDCRAS, IDCREAS, RMA, and municipal budget databases) combined with thematic-categorical content analysis, while using the municipalities of São Paulo (SP) and Belo Horizonte (MG) as additional comparative benchmarks as they are regarded as national benchmarks based on their innovative local policies.. As main findings and preliminary conclusions, the dissertation provides a novel contribution by demonstrating that, despite the national normative standardization of SUAS, local political legacies and past budgetary choices created distinct historical path dependencies. Consequently, Natal and Mossoró accommodated federal bureaucracy under particular local political logics, revealing that state capacities in public service provision do not depend solely on financial resources, but on how the local bureaucracy copes with urban vulnerability and the boundaries of universalization within contexts of deep regional inequality

COMMITTEE MEMBERS:
Presidente - 1715152 - SANDRA CRISTINA GOMES
Interno - 4881313 - ANDERSON CRISTOPHER DOS SANTOS
Externo à Instituição - EDGILSON TAVARES DE ARAUJO - UFBA
Externo à Instituição - RENATA MIRANDOLA BICHIR - USP