STATE CAPABILITIES AND SOCIAL PARTICIPATION: IMPACTS ON THE MANAGEMENT OF SOCIAL ASSISTANCE POLICY PARAÍBA`S MUNICIPALITIES
State Capabilities, Social Assistance, Bureaucracy, Social Participation
The analysis based on state capabilities presupposes the centrality of the role of the state as an essential condition for the achievement of the objectives proposed in the formulation of public policies. According to Skocpol (1985), analyzing state capabilities means supporting the thesis of the role of the State as an active actor in the development processes of nations. The study at hand contemplates, from the point of view of social welfare policy, two central dimensions of state capabilities: the first, the professionalized bureaucracy, pointed out by Souza and Fontanelli (2020) corresponds to the formation of a professional body institutionally organized and technically qualified in the weberian molds. The second dimension, political-relational, contemplates the involvement of multiple actors (political, economic and social) in decision-making processes, given the democratic character of the formation of the Brazilian State. Therefore, it involves considering social participation via mechanisms of interaction between the State and civil society. From an approach focused on the instruments and arrangements for the implementation of public policies, Pires and Gomide (2018) put in evidence the "set of actors, processes and mechanisms that establish roles and links between them in the conduct of government actions." (PIRES; GOMIDE, 2018, p. 31). Following the authors' perspective, our thesis argues that in social assistance policy, the professionalized and technically qualified bureaucracy engenders social participation processes, generating impacts on policy management in municipalities. Thus, our general objective is to understand how state capacities, from the professionalized bureaucracy and its relations with political and social actors, impact the management of social assistance policy. The specific objectives are: I) diagnose the professionalized bureaucracy present in the social assistance policy in the municipalities; II) verify the interaction of political and social actors in the management of social assistance policy; III) identify the institutional arrangements in force in the management of social assistance policy in the municipalities; IV) compare the processes of development of social assistance policy from the deliberations resulting from the National Social Assistance Conferences in the periods 2011 to 2015 and 2017 to 2021 in the municipalities. To this end, we will conduct an exploratory case study (YIN, 2001). The first stage of the research, referring to the collection of secondary data, will consist of bibliographic and documentary research. The second stage, to obtain primary data, will use semi-structured interviews with state actors, bureaucrats who work in the execution of the policy (technicians, coordinators, secretaries, managers etc.) and non-state actors (civil society) active in councils, management committees, debate forums and social assistance conferences. We have therefore entered the universe of subnational municipal units because we understand them as the legitimate locus of public policy execution. With this study, we aim to contribute to a research agenda under construction that contemplates, above all, state capacities at the municipal level.