Causeless negligence or unknown interests? The causes for the absence of state-municipal cooperation in education in Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil.
federalism; intergovernmental relations; cooperation; state governments; education policies.
This research dialogues with the literature on federalism and public policies, assuming that intergovernmental relations among federal entities is a challenge insofar as, given their political autonomy, forms of cooperation depend on institutional arrangements that produce incentives to it. The case of education is of special interest because of its particular characteristics which, in theory, tend to produce low cooperation between levels of government. However, the Brazilian literature has accumulated significant knowledge about the adoption of coordination strategies in social policies, including education, at the national level based on standardization and policy induction instruments at the federal level, that is, inducing relations between the Federal, states and municipal governments. There are, however, gaps in understanding cooperation between states and their municipalities in education. There is a concentration of studies in some cases (with the high coordination capacity of the Stare of Ceará being the most studied), few analyzes in the rest of the states and, even less so, where there are few signs of state-municipal vertical cooperation, as is the case of case of Rio Grande do Norte (RN). In this way, the objective of this research is to identify the factors raised by the literature that explain the efficiency and effectiveness of the state coordination in the provision of public services and, in this way, try to explain why the state of RN does not cooperate with its municipalities. The research adopts quantitative and qualitative techniques for collecting and analyzing data and information.